Chronicles of the Weary Warrior

A Foray into Sky

2009-10-13T22:20:00.000-07:00

It was a great adventure, and lots of fun. Thanks, Forevermore!

P.S. I appreciate the axe very very much! It wasn't something I ever expected to have.

P.P.S. I'll try not to die as much next time.

There are ways to say things

2009-10-06T12:15:00.001-07:00

This knowledge may be a function of age, but I'd like to think that people can pick up the skill in their youth: There is a time and place for self-promotion.

When someone is talking about something that they've undertaken and feel good about, that's usually not the right time to place your accomplishments as some sort of counterpoint. In other words, I don't recommend reframing someone's goals in light of your own success, because for the most part the other person isn't really looking for that. That's purely for your own satisfaction. It's a very ego-centric act, one that falls on either deaf ears, or exasperated ones.

For instance, if I drop a line to the linkshell stating that I'm making progress on my Lu Shangs, a response like "Yeah and in 6 months, you'll have your noob rod" or "Ebisu or GTFO" won't elicit ... whatever it was you were trying to accomplish by saying that. Were you trying to encourage me by managing my expectations? Or were you inflating yourself?

I understand that it is meant partially in jest, but at the same time... it isn't really. While you may be chuckling, what you've done is take someone's else's goal and put it against the backdrop of your ego.

I honestly don't really care how long it's going to take, and I know the Ebisu is superior. And I don't care whether you have one already or not. This has no bearing on what I was announcing.

Anyway, I seem to encounter this type of attitude constantly in MMOs. And again I'm not sure whether it's a function of age (doubtful, considering how many adults play) or the fact that the game somehow attracts people who require validation at the expense of others... a sort of meritocracy of disdain, a nerd locker room. But it should be common decency to understand that when someone is patting themselves on the back a little, that's usually not the right time to jump in and burst their bubble.

Be secure enough in your own experience to know when to encourage others. They just might look up to you for it.

Enough said. Moving on.

When something changed

2009-09-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'd been fishing for a few days since my reincarnation.

Aside from building up a few Imperial Standing points, I hadn't done much of anything else since I'd returned. I had a lot of excuses for this: not enough time, on too late, not enough money, not enough focus. A lot of those deficiencies were real, and still are, but somehow making excuses to myself seemed defeatist... in a really absurd way.

Why would I log on to convince myself of what I cannot do? What would be the purpose in that? I had a reason for playing, and I was trying to remember it.

In a sense, I'm still trying to remember it. An MMO continues to be such a strange thing for me. It definitely fills a gap in my activities, but it's one that I still can't manage to pin down or articulate.

So anyway, I fished.

I found that activity oddly more satisfying than the crafting labor afterward. Perhaps it was the simple interactivity of the fishing rod telegraphing my catch, or the sense that I was pulling pure profit out of the water. Or maybe it was the fact that it was subtly changing my attention, clarifying through idleness.

I noticed that I started pausing at sights. At statements. At people.

Something about listening to my friends talk and laugh while I gazed at the water, waiting for my next catch, made me feel like I was on vacation. It introduced something I hadn't felt in the game before, perhaps because it was obscured by my own worries and perpetual sense of fighting the clock, of imminent temporal bankruptcy.

I remembered the feeling of dozing on the beach and hearing the voices of my family over the roar of the surf, the sound of a small, intimate space briefly etched upon a gigantic landscape, something that made me feel vastly fortunate but equally insignificant.

Maybe this was why I had returned.

I realize many people delve into these worlds with the intention of attaining some sort of stature or significance however virtual or personal or simply fun, but I've realized that I dove into this particular one for almost the opposite reason.

I want to grow this character, and I want to explore. But perhaps because my personal life holds enough in the way of significant decisions and paths, or because I simply don't have the energy once I manage to enter Vana'diel, but whatever the reason: I don't care to aim for significance.

Or rather, I don't want to hold significance in the future, dangling in front of myself like a carrot on a stick. That's fundamentally disempowering and frustrating for me, specifically because of the limiting parameters that surround my play time.

I want to enjoy the game, and everything it entails as I play it, and I want to fully own the way I choose to play.

The cynical part of me thinks that this almost flies in the face of what most people consider to be an MMO player, but another part of me thinks this is simply the more honest way to go. I've come to discover it's one of the reasons why I entered this world from the very beginning.

With FFXIV a ways off...

2009-08-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

I'm waxing nostalgic over this game. How is everyone doing? What is the state of this game? Is the player population still healthy on Ifrit? The economy, still stable?

I'm honestly thinking of re-activating old Frohike and going on another journey.

On the eve of another short hiatus...

2008-11-03T08:08:00.000-08:00

I decide to update. So Fallout 3 came out last week, and I'm deeply addicted, which means most if not all of my available FFXI time has gone... for now.

So to all of you on Ifrit who read this occasionally, I haven't quit again. I'm just busy playing something else ;-)

Most of my activity since the last post consisted of leveling Alchemy, from 62 to 70, and making up the skillup cost in steady sales of consumables and a few Halcyon Rods.

Other miscellaneous accomplishments/activities include capping my sword skill (finally!) and taking up Dancer which I was able to level from 1 to 10 in a couple of sessions. Hooray for Drain Samba!

Anyhow, back to post-nuclear Washington DC! I'll see you all in a few.

Level Sync = Parties for BLM

2008-09-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

After another hiatus, I logged in once more to find a large patch awaiting download, coincidentally the day after it had gone live.

All I've got to say is... where was Level Sync two years ago? Better late than never, I suppose. The effects of the new system were immediately obvious when I received a party invite to the jungle within minutes of seeking on my BLM. Unfortunately for me, an incompatible DAT modification caused my game to crash the minute I targeted a Level Synced player, so a lengthy file check and re-download killed my partying for that evening.

The next night was spent with Cozmos, Katella and the gang, skilling up sword (to 246) on crabs in the tree.

The subsequent two nights have been spent manaburning with a random pickup and partying with friends.

A couple of hiccups I can forsee with Level Sync partying:

Mage macros will be annoying to adjust in the lower stages. And it'll be easy to forget those adjustments, causing you to throw a lolStone2 at a mob in a level 60 party. Automatic "downgrading" of tiered spells would be nice, but probably isn't going to happen.

Skills (weapon and magic) are going to take a nosedive if people Level Sync too much, as far as I can tell. For instance I'm unable to cap much of anything at level 38 in these jungle parties.

But the fun factor has certainly received a much needed boost.

Zitah... Not this place again

2008-08-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've logged a couple of sessions and milked the Attowah Chasm camp for all it was worth. What an awesome, godforsaken, deserted & spacious, easy solo EXP camp.

I'll miss it dearly.

In the single session I spent in Zitah, I've had my BLM solo fun and leveled the job to 35. However, the pulls are much slower due to the bats and the Goblin Trader's tendency to either cluster around another Trader, or turn at really inopportune times. Many an ES+Sleepga+logout, and chains are more a matter of luck than rhythm.

I enjoyed the happenstance company of another suffering BLM solo'er and had to watch him die a couple of times from unavoidable bad pulls or "sliveritis" moments. I think BST are familiar with sliveritis, and believe me, it's supremely painful on a mage/NIN job.

I haven't been able to clock very many hours due to various RL job duties, but I'm feeling the itch to return to BLM and level it further. Something about the risky solo factor just keeps drawing me back.

Busy Workin'... & Brewin'

2008-07-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

In character with the Warrior side of Frohike, I've been busy brewing beer. And while enjoying my brew, I've been slaving away at supplemental work I'd rather not do, yet needs to be done.

Drinking. Making bucks...

BLM can wait a bit.

Tumbleweeds

2008-07-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

This old server is getting rather empty, and many of my friends are gone. I'm kind of hanging around for the few folks left on DarkEden, but even that pearl has been mostly empty when I'm online.

I'm tired of being the lone US player in a sea of jaded JP. I'm tired of entertaining activities other than partying because I simply won't get invites in my time slot.

I'm tired of logging into a ghost town full of endgamers.

So I'm looking at fresher servers with more EU players. Possibly Sylph.

I'm not making any rash decisions yet, because I suspect that much of this is caused by the age of the game itself. But I'm getting that feeling that it's time to move on to different pastures.

Ah, that's better

2008-07-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

After banging my head senseless, I returned to Bibiki Bay to regain my lost experience points. I waited for about 30 minutes for a DNC solo'er to finish, and used my /dance1-4 animations which I'm sure he found extremely funny and had never seen before (yeah, he probably wanted to throttle me). I eventually got the camp and went about 1k into level 31.

Then I moved out to Attowah Chasm L-8 and wished I had done so sooner. The fly pets were giving me 180-200 EXP on average, and I could get chains up to around 3 or so. I didn't heed the guide's advice to bring a Reraise Earring (probably had to something to do with banging my head earlier), and of course eventually had to Warp my way back to town to get one. A couple of deaths notwithstanding, this is the best solo EXP camp I've had on BLM so far. Guess I'll be staying here through 33-34.

BLM. 30. Solo. Bang Head Here.

2008-07-22T09:51:00.001-07:00

I ramped up slowly on my first few days back and basically tele-taxi'd and chatted with the LS. Then it was down to business, and frustration, as I picked up BLM again to carry it from 30 to 37 (or maybe 40, who knows). I'm not sure if any of you remember solo'ing BLM at this point, but there appears to be only one decent camp for 105-180 EXP per kill: Bibiki Bay, H-6, Goblin's Rarab.

One decent camp + any random number of people leveling BLM, WAR, SCH, or any fucking thing at level 29-30ish (since apparently no one parties at these levels any more) = extremely limited camp availability. Every time I logged on, someone was there. Once I actually got the camp, it was decent and I leveled into 31 with a moderate buffer. OK, 300 exp. I was tired of the place.

I rejoiced, ate my Sleepga scroll, misread the solo guide, OP warped over to Zitah, paid 4000 gil to set my HP, and promptly got my ass handed to me by a leech pet.

Huh... weird that he resisted my Sleep. Must be a fluke. No problem! Dust myself off, HP to the outpost, run to the next pet... and grab Goblin agro. I've now deleveled back to 30, am clearly in the wrong EXP area and don't want to go back to Bibiki. But I pretty much have to, or explore some camps in Beaucedine or Attowah that are for 31+.

Guh...

It's good to be back!

The compulsion of memory

2008-07-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've re-activated my character with some vague plan to log back in and... reconnect somehow. I'm not sure if my resolve will continue, but I'm currently in the process of re-installing XP onto my laptop and getting all of the drivers set up, etc.

My main worry now: will these same memories that impel me to return cause me to feel all the more lonely... and willing to leave again.

Guess there's only one way to find out.

In case you hadn't guessed

2008-03-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

I've decided to cancel my content ID's for now. The decision to quit playing stems from a number of factors in my life which I won't go into detail about, lest I bore most of you to death. Those of you in the "inner circle" know what I've been going through for the past 6 months or so, and probably understand why I'm doing this.

Much of it also goes back to the reasons I discussed in my polemic awhile ago. FFXI hit the floor during yet another juggling act, and by the time I came back to it I realized that my motivations for keeping that particular object aloft were growing obsolete.

Of course any of my readers are welcome to stay in touch with me via email:

psbauman AT gmail DOT com

or on Yahoo IM:

paulsbauman

Ciao, and thanks for reading! Maybe I'll see some of you in a more ... Cimmerian environment? Nudge, nudge, wink wink.

/salute
/shutdown

I'm still around...

2007-12-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

Just not in Vanadiel.

But I'll be back when the holidays blow over...

Just thought I'd take the chance to wish all of you happy holidays.

To the friends whom I've left temporarily while my life stabilizes, know that I miss you. To the friends who've left the game but drop by here periodically, know that I appreciate the chances I get to talk to you and share a bit of my life and yours. To those who've vanished into the woodwork, know that I think about you even years after you typed that last /logout.

I'd say it seems silly to say so, but that would amount to false snobbery, so I'll just say it outright: my life really has been altered in subtle ways, and for the better, by the folks I've met in this strange melding of casual passtime, monumental collaborative achievement, mild to depraved geekery, and virtual treadmilling.

To supplement your merriment this holiday, I give you a LARP/RPG/MMO defiled staging of the nativity scene. Merry Xmas!

20238 Files Remaining

2007-11-28T21:47:00.000-08:00

Just ... kill me now. Go ahead, I've got reraise up. -_-;

Anyway, my WotG disc finally arrived yesterday and I attempted to install it, only to be greeted by an "invalid drive Z:\" error due to a recently mapped then disconnected network drive that for the life of me I could no longer find anywhere in any registry on the hard drive.

Stupid Windows...

A re-install did the trick, but of course that also meant a complete rebuild of FFXI from the original version up. Hence the file count.

But not all is technical doom and gloom. In the few sessions I managed to steal over the past week, I've raised my BLM to 30, my WHM to 43, and my fishing to 40, and had the privilege to welcome an old friend, Thitond, back to the game. He began his long hiatus before the ToAU expansion was released, so I've been having fun introducing him to a few Aht Urghan related activities and quests.

I should be back in the saddle in the next few days.

Thank you, Brandson! TYTYTY

2007-11-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

He updated both the font and map packs for the latest version:

http://brandson.livejournal.com/

Now my eyes can stop bleeding!

{Hmmm} USB SchmUSB

2007-11-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

Having the USB devices plugged in doesn't seem to matter.

The drivers are causing the problem, and these are enabled despite the absence of the external devices.

People are having positive results when they disable all "HID-compliant" devices in the Computer Management console. I've done it, and it doesn't affect my current ability to use either the native laptop keyboard or the external keyboard + mouse.

This absolutely worked for me. No more chugging, even while windowed.

Here's the thread on alla.

I'm on a MacBook Pro
Intel Core Duo 2.33
the adapter through boot camp is currently: ATI Mobility Radeon X1600

Now I'm working on the ghetto anti-aliasing problem. I'm testing slight increases to values in the Overlay resolution to account for the additional pixels from the window "box." If I can compensate accurately, I think the windowed can be made to look fine. Will post details here as soon as I get them.

Addendum (12/5/07): I've discovered that, for whatever reason, 1360 x 768, seems to be the maximum resolution supported by the native windowed mode. When the overlay resolution is set to this, and the gamma is adjusted appropriately, everything works fine. It's disappointing that the windowed mode seems to be subject to the same problems with Vertical Sync as the unofficial windower (i.e. Vertical Sync doesn't really work here). But at least it doesn't look like butt anymore.

/fume framerate

2007-11-19T21:14:00.000-08:00

Maybe SquareEnix should have consulted Cliff Spradlin before implementing their sloppy version of windowing.

The windowed mode sucks. It essentially downgrades the resolution rather than intelligently adjusting the window size to accommodate the resolution set in the configuration, resulting in unsightly blur, otherwise known as ghetto anti-aliasing. For instance windowing in 1440x900 actually "squeezes" that resolution into something like a 1440x800 window.

Not only did they get the windowing wrong but they crippled the framerate in all modes for no discernible reason.

I've achieved some amount of playability by disabling mip mapping and forcing vertical sync off (rather than "app preference"), but it's still choppy.

I'm also grumpy because I can't use Branson's font pack anymore, but that's the nature of dat-swapping.

Black Mage - To the Jungles and Beyond!

2007-11-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

My time, as usual, has been a bit limited, but I've used what I could to level fishing from 35 to 39 over the past week or so.

And... Black Mage from 21 to 28 since Friday! I phased from risky solo experiments in Delkfutt, to lucky party invites, to solo'ing less riskily with my NPC on worms, to unlucky party invites (WHM/THF... enough said), to duo'ing with a friend. A nice party this afternoon even gave me a chance to Magic Burst for some very satisfying damage.

A big thank you to my friend Cozmos for helping out a party in Qufim, and to my friend Katella for staying up later than usual and duo'ing bats with me until I got to level 25 and could eat my Aspir and Tractor scrolls. I'm lucky to have such patient and generous companions in Vanadiel ^_^

All in all, despite all the educational solo deaths (each one taught me something different), the experience has been quite pleasant. Even, dare I say, addictive.

On another note, I couldn't resist those red glasses everyone's been wearing, so I joined the pseudo-NM camping fun and got my Fancy Specs. Their red color gave me an idea for an outfit...

Snazzy no?

Why Frohike hasn't been on much

2007-11-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

/check
{Impossible to gauge}!
Aggressive. Detects by Sound+Sight.
Special ability: {Charm}

This little one has required my attention at night lately. Until she's completely weaned from night feedings, yours truly has been the one to console her back to sleep. The process is nearly over, but until then, I can't really do much besides fish... Partying is out of the question, since a WHM who needs to go AFK at a moment's notice probably wouldn't work out so well.

Not that I mind. I'm {charm}ed, remember? ;-)

She's grown quite a bit since the last picture I posted here...

Spend spend spend! /giggle

2007-11-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

Um I mean... /laugh maniacally! Ahem...

Between fishing and teleporting, and a parting gift from my friend Lexxi, I've built up a hefty nest egg. I was planning on buying a Lu Shangs when I'd gathered a 300k or so buffer (and live like a pauper while I put the rod to use), but an idle shout from someone selling a Berserker's Axe for 500k (100k below AH price) proved too tempting to resist.

I purchased this and, since the momentum had taken me, I also bought a Pole Strap for 100k. The spending bug had bitten me early last week as well, when I upgraded my Venerer Ring to another Woodsman, and finally ditched the Spike Earring for a Merman's Earring.

Unless I start to work on a haste build or want to tweak some STR here & there, this pretty much completes my purchasable equipment collection for my Warrior.

To Cozmos's delight I'm sure, I'm entertaining the idea of leveling my WHM further. Must... resist... BST!

But for now, I think I'll need some more gil. 1 mil seems respectable, but I'll be more comfortable with 1.5 mil or so before I resume spending activities.

A great retrospective on Gametrailers.com

2007-11-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

Just came across this on the destructoid feed and found it quite interesting. A video retrospective of each of the Final Fantasy iterations.

Something nice to watch while LFG ^^

Enjoy!

So what do you think? Pretty close?

2007-11-02T19:27:00.001-07:00

That's me. I had to close my lids a little to look as weary as my avatar, though. XD

Katella of ... Ifrit?!

2007-11-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't been doing much besides fishing lately. There are so many things I could do, but I'm just being lazy, and doing what I like to do which is what this game is mostly about, I suppose. What can I say, I'm an unapologetic fisherman and voracious music listener, two proclivities that complement each other nicely in Vanadiel.

While reeling in another pesky Bluetail, I received an unexpected /tell from a taru whom I didn't recognize:

Ashlynna>> {Hello!} ^^
>>Ashlynna {Hello!}
Ashlynna>> I know you don't know who I am.. lol.. but I read your blog alot.. and I know you've left a couple of
Ashlynna>> comments on mine
Ashlynna>> my main char is Katella, from the Ramuh server

=O !

It turns out that Katella, author of the Katella of Ramuh blog (now alliteratively titled Katella's Corner), is migrating to Ifrit! Yay!

She was scoping things out on Ashlynna and apparently had a good experience, which is good to hear. I hopped out to give her a DarkEden pearl and meet her avatar-to-avatar.

Welcome aboard, Katella. I hope to adventure with you soon ^_^/

Happy Halloween Everyone!

2007-10-31T10:06:00.001-07:00

Unexpected accomplishments, and a fond farewell

2007-10-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Today's Idle Thought on Idle Thoughts

2007-10-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

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:

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

So, do you do this as well? If so, what do your virtual sessions in Vana'diel consist of?

Pirate's Chart... Beginner's luck?

2007-10-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

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.

Honing the Rampager and Defeating Diabolos

2007-10-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Questage, Crafticism, and some Gilification

2007-10-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

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:

Decisions, decisions

2007-09-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Neither of my LS's have been very active for the past week so I've logged in sporadically to fish up materials. A few hours usually net me enough mats to craft a week's worth of restock for the AH unless the moon phase is particularly bad.

When I do make it back to town, I've been teletaxi'ing while keeping the AH slots full and leveling Smithing. I've been wondering what to take past 60, and haven't been able to make up my mind, so I plan to level as many crafts as possible up to 60 and decide from there. Can't hurt, right? A conversation with my friend Killmer has me thinking about taking Bonecraft as my main.

On the skillup front, my GA is at 272/276. At this point I can probably get away with equipping it in meripo, but I'm saving up my gil to get the Berserker's Axe, rather than the borderline-gimpy Gawain's Axe. The Berserker's currently sells for 500k, which would be roughly half of my fortune at the moment.

I'm almost tempted to bring my Rampager along, but I think I'll work on the latent in skillup parties and Besieged rather than slow a meripo down. 400 Weapon Skill Points will take awhile, unfortunately, but I think it'll definitely be worth the effort, especially if I combine it with the appropriate grip and a decent haste build.

CoP Prep, Assault, Ark Angels

2007-09-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

I've logged in every other night or so for the past couple of weeks, chipping away at various things as best I can, with the help of my friends.

The Roughnecks, to my knowledge, are all ready to fight Diabolos, with the possible exception of Ahmber who I don't believe has a Pso'Xja chip yet. Various time constraints and vacations have kept us from proceeding further, but we should see a Diabolos run sometime soon.

I'm finally close to capping Great Axe (hooray for Besieged!), something I've sorely needed to complete, especially considering the 2-handed weapon adjustment. I'm kicking myself for not having purchased a Berserker's Axe back when they were going for 150k. The update has unfortunately caused a spike in price, 600k now being the going rate. Guess my Gawain's Axe will have to do for now.

Ever happy to bring another DRG into the game, I helped a newcomer to the Roughnecks LS, Rendsoul, in completing his dragon fight.

Other nights have alternated between various Assaults (finally got Private First Class! yay!) and gradual Ark Angel victories with the DarkEden group.

We haven't had too much trouble, with the exception of the Elvaan PLD/WHM who has been regularly wiping the floor with us.

Highlights from the battles include a nasty charm from the Mithra, causing me to kill Feon and Cozmos successively. Fortunately this was merely comedic and not disastrous, since Redwing nuked her to death.

Another priceless moment consisted of me trying to kite the Elvaan when Feon went down. I seriously need more kiting practice. Feon gave me some tips, so I hopefully won't blow it on the next attempt.

o_O

2007-09-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Some puzzling info on the next version update:

[...] The following issues will be addressed:

[...]

-All random number calculations for damage amounts are not being calculated properly

-Amount of damage is not being corrected properly when characters are equipped with two-handed weapons

-Both the attack and accuracy of monsters equipped with two-handed weapons are higher than intended.

OK... what the hell? Did someone finally decide to start debugging code? I don't get it. How could damage calculations have been out of whack for this long without being rectified? Or are these issues that were introduced with the last update?

Or do the developers simply want to screw with everyone's PDIF calculations? The world may never know.

It lives!

2007-08-28T22:53:00.001-07:00

I guess my birthday is an appropriate day to assure everyone that I'm still very much alive. My FFXI schedule took a beating this month, mostly because I'm running out of steam as far as the game is concerned, but I do enjoy logging in to spend time with friends. Bioshock claimed a good portion of my time this past week, but I'll be logging on a bit more frequently in the coming weeks.

As a quick recap of occurrences since my last post.

8/11: helped Ahmber get his LB2. Always fun to fight those NMs.

8/12: completed my Attowah Chasm map quest, with Feon's assistance for the Mandy fight at Purgo Isle.

8/18: completed the last leg of the "Road Forks" CoP Mission with the kind help of Feon/Ishy and Coz. Antlion fight, and a nice climb up that mountain at Attowah Chasm. Yes, I fell once -_-

8/21: did some farming in Pso'Xja, but didn't get a chip to drop. Did however get a chest key and a Florid Stone, so my time wasn't entirely wasted.

8/22 until last night: Bioshock, Bioshock, and some more Bioshock.

Roughnecks beat the Mammets and Frohike visits... Sky?!

2007-08-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough & busy week, and I haven't logged in much except at appointed times for certain activities. I've been focussed on getting the Roughnecks through the 40-cap CoP missions before our static moves on through the 40's and into the 50's.

Our first attempt at at 2-5 back on the 29th didn't go as planned, mostly due to critical miscommunications and the "Mammets! /panic!" factor. I won't go into detail, but we ended up farming a couple more Giant Scales and calling it a night.

Our subsequent attempt this past Friday night initially went as planned, until our first Mammet pull decided to remain in nuking form for some reason and didn't go down before I and several others died. It was a wipe. Lexxi reraised and we scrambled back into formation to at least try to complete the BC before the time ran out. I made a lame attempt at kiting in full Royal Squire's gear to allow Ahmber, our THF/NIN kiter, to reraise and head back to the entrance, but... I pretty much kited like a brick wall and went down quickly. That BC was a bust.

The second attempt of the night went...perfectly! Ahmber now had some practice kiting and had become a pro. Murrdoc (RDM/NIN) kept him healed nicely. Our killing party (Quan BLU/NIN [puller], Maloc PLD/WAR, myself WAR/NIN, Lexxi WHM/BLM) quickly turned during Transmogrifications, and the first Mammet thankfully switched to Polearm early in the fight, enabling me to spam Yellow Liquid to keep him in that form. That one died pretty quickly, and we expected to die in turn on the second Mammet, but didn't.

As the second one went down, we had basically won the BC, since we still had a healthy HP and MP pool and Doc and Ahmber now joined the fray. Even if we had died, we would have had sufficient time to reraise and dispose of the final Mammet. However, everyone remained alive until the very end, when yours truly died swinging... as usual.

A huge congratulations to the Roughnecks for toughing this one out. I know these missions can be discouraging, but they're a big part of the game experience and, in my opinion, much more fun that the EXP grind. There's nothing quite like doing this with close friends too. On to Diabolos!

In other news, Feon/Ishy kindly helped me with the last leg of the ZM journey to Sky: the magic pot fight.

While we were spelunking the Quicksand Caves, we assisted his friend in getting the Ancient Salt drop for her Opo Opo Crown, which didn't take as long as expected, so we headed to the Temple of Uggalepih to try for the Fish Bones, but weren't as lucky on that attempt.

We did, however, encounter Sozu Sarberry, unclaimed. We killed him rather quickly, but he didn't produce the money drop. Fun fight, nonetheless.

Before the Roughneck re-attempts at the Mammets, I finished up the CS busywork and made my way to Sky for some screenshots. Maybe I'll see some action there someday.

Here's a cool quote from the CS leading up to my first entry into Tu'Lia:

But as one bright star shines through the clouds at night
And as one song rings clear above the roar of beasts
We hold to one hope in these darkest of times.
And someday, that hope will become our dreams... our prayers...

Hello, Sky. Didn't think I'd actually get to see you...

Zilart Mission 8 complete, Minotaur Re-redux

2007-07-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

I haven't focussed on EXP'ing much this past week, and have even taken the past two nights "off", but the week contained enough events to constitute a good time.

Last Friday, Feon and posse (Cozmos, Ishy) kindly offered assistance with ZM8, which was completed pretty quickly although I managed to pull hate off of Feon at a rather inopportune time and died to Kam'lanaut's Light Blade move. Fortunately Kam was near death, so Feon was able to Mijin Gakure away the rest of his HP.

The Pallas pop item dropped while we'd had been killing our way to the BC, so we killed that NM on the way out of Delkfutt. No bracelets, though. -_-

I set up a CoP 2-3 run for the Roughnecks on Monday, which would be my third time completing this mission, and it still retained the fun factor!

Out of curiosity, I decided to be the person who runs solo to the Minotaur & draws the rest of the party in. Although the path is straightforward, the run certainly was an exciting exercise in dodging True Sight agro from the Steg/Taurus mobs.

A dry run (sans Roughnecks) had taught me a valuable lesson that I hadn't learned in my prior completions of this mission: Steg/Taurus line of sight extends upward, meaning they will agro you from he bottom of a ladder if you stand too close to the edge. Unfortunately, this makes it really difficult to gauge the direction of the mob's sight when it stands directly under the ladder unless a tail is sticking out to provide some indication.

My "real" attempt went more smoothly although I still agro'd a Taurus around G-7 on the second map (sometimes they just turn at the worst times). Refusing to start the whole thing over, I decided to just... run my ass off to see what would happen. My shadows were eventually stripped and I took 2-3 hits, but I managed to get up the next ladder without interruption and ran a bit more. Apparently the ladder slowed the mob's pursuit, resulting in enough distance for a despawn. This was definitely a heart-thumping moment, so I had to compose myself at K-5, and the final stretch eventually cleared.

The Minotaur fight itself went smoothly, although Ahmber faced Mortal Ray and was Doomed... apparently without Holy Water since he died at the conclusion of the fight. A few more people died to Mortal Ray that night, due to the same reason, which leads me to believe that, despite reading walkthroughs and warnings, people will just never really look for the move nor bring the curative item until it actually happens to them at least once (and no, I can't say I'm an exception to this... see my recounting of my own CoP 2-3 run ^_^;).

The rest of the mission was completed without a hitch. Rather than farm the Bronze Key, Ahmber had brought his THF and a Skeleton Key (or several, I'm not sure) and managed to pick the lock on the first attempt, which saved us a ton of time.

All in all it was a fun mission, even though there were moments where I just had to telegraph or bark instructions to prevent mishaps or to just enable me to focus on where I was going but simultaneously direct/inform the group. I might have inherited this style from a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, but I'll try to make more of an attempt to be a bit more respectful with my orders. Hard to do in the heat of the moment sometimes, though.

To blog or not to blog

2007-07-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Another long pause between posts. My free time is really dwindling, to the point where even lunch at work consists of stuffing my face as I continue coding. So...I'm running out of places in the day to compose my thoughts and type something up.

Blogging about FFXI is becoming part of the opportunity cost when I decide to log on and actually play FFXI rather than blog about it. That said, I'll put up a quick entry while my kids are getting ready for bed.

I've accomplished quite a few things this week, some solo, some with the help of my friends.

Feon and his group assisted me in completing ZM6, which was a fun fight, excepting the part where I ate an Eagle Eye Shot when my shadows were down, and died on the next strike. Hooray for no EXP loss in ZM BC fights!

A couple of evenings later, Feon invited me to participate in the slaying of the Quadav king: Za'Dha Adamantking. It was a longish fight, mostly because Za'Dha is a WHM and used Benediction at one point, later followed by high Cure spam. But we eventually took him down and got our title, albeit no 10-million-gil-club dropped.

With the assistance of the Roughnecks, I've reached level 42 on my WHM. Although this was my initial goal for the job, I'm seriously considering a longer WHM career, if only for the fun of it. I do enjoy the job, I won't lie.

On the solo front, I completed my Blessed Hammer quest, then went on to kill many of Marchelute's cousins in Fei'Yin for a relatively quick key drop (about 1.5 to 2 hours) and eventual completion of my Teleport-Vahzl quest. Yes, I'm now a full fledged teleport monkey!

This Just In: Powerleveling still sucks

2007-07-12T12:03:00.001-07:00

For some godforsaken reason, I neglected to go /anon when I logged in last night and, on a whim, accepted an invitation to party in the Crawler's Nest.

I was on a bit early, and I figured it would be a good way to play EXP-catchup with the Roughnecks static. Of course, both Lexxi and Murrdoc got on earlier than I expected, and within minutes of accepting the invitation, Feon & Coz also invited me on another Titan Prime run.

I made a stupid decision and remained with the party.

When I got out there, I was absolutely stunned to find a powerleveler. We had a Bard, we had decent DD, we had a Paladin. Why this 75 RDM? I was so flustered, I forgot to even buff the party when I got there, not that it would have made a difference. I never got a chance to throw on a decent cure except during the off moments when the PL slipped up. At least I was allowed to remove status ailments, but ... that was about it. I came very, very close to just running in and meleeing the mob out of boredom.

And of course, as with most PL'd parties I've experienced, people died or came close to dying on more than one occasion, and the EXP sucked, for the usual reasons.

A. Overcamping. We were stationed in the 'hidden' chamber. The first pull was an Exoray (our level range was 37-39), which took a good 5 minutes to kill. Subsequent pulls were mostly IT++ Flies which were taking several minutes to kill, with the occasional Crawler (which we should have been targeting exclusively).

B. No communication with the PL. Downtime would suddenly be interrupted by some insane pull hitting the WAR/NIN (sans shadows) for massive HP and no response from the PL (ostensibly AFK) and myself fumbling for the Cure3 and pulling hate, or not being fast enough and watching the puller die.

C. No hate management. The PLD was always in the white and was losing hate to the MNK constantly.

D. Boring the living shit out of the WHM. The status ailments were all that kept me awake, and this boredom would really backfire when the PL would go AFK without announcing it.

So I reached level 39 tonight without earning it. /hurray for powerleveling.

No more pickups for awhile for me...

WHM 38, Teletaxi Income, Mammets

2007-07-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

Due to a lack of free time, I'll need to keep this entry brief.

Part of the past week was spent leveling WHM to 38 with the Roughnecks. After a slew of nights in the Garlaige Citadel, which from a healer's perspective is a bit dull, I was happy to start EXPing in the Crawler's Nest. I had to keep my eyes constantly glued to the screen to remove Slow & Poison, keep the tank Regen'd & healed, and took whatever chances I could to rest during the fights since the pickup puller was pretty aggressive (and I didn't want to drink away all of my gil). The pace and timing of the work gave me more respect for healers in status-effect heavy areas such as Caedarva Mire.

This level unlocked Teleport-Yhoat and Teleport-Altep for me, which gives me more opportunity to earn tele-taxi gil, and comes in quite handy for a quick hop to those zones when I'm not within easy reach of a Sandy warp. I'm actually surprised at the earning power of teleports, particularly during prime time, especially considering that 1 or 2k is worth quite a bit more than say... a year ago. This leaves me to wonder how long it will take for prices to drop to the old 500 gil standby from days of yore.

A few nights ago, I assisted Lycasdemus with another Minotaur fight. This went much more smoothly than my last one, since everyone was prepared and several of us had completed the mission before.

On the night before last, I rejoined the same group and went through Promathia Mission 2-5. Yes...the Mammets. The group consisted of WHM, RNG, WAR, PLD, SAM, and an additional healer for the journey through Riverne. It took awhile to get the Giant Scales to drop, but nothing monumental, and we dodged Hyppogryph agro without major incident.

At the Mammet fight, we employed the strategy that involves a single kiter (in this case RNG) agroing all targets without hitting them, rendering the kiter healable without the danger of pulling hate. Meanwhile a single puller brings the first Mammet to the entrance and the party goes all out, killing it as quickly as possible and moving on to the second. We managed to kill this one as well right before the party wiped, putting us in an excellent position to finish the battle once reraised. We had about 10 minutes left, I believe, when we completed the mission.

We trudged on through all the cutscenes and I logged out after the Overgrown Ivy fight for some badly needed sleep (it was 2AM). I still need to complete the Windy portion of the story branch, including the Antlion fight, but that will need to wait until another day.

Wow, Lost Odyssey! (Off Topic)

2007-07-05T10:13:00.001-07:00

Caught this on the Destructoid feed. Famitsu has released shots & basic info concerning a new RPG titled Lost Odyssey, which will ostensibly be released at the end of the year.

I'm glad the 360 will finally be getting something besides Oblivion and Blue Dragon in the way of RPG's, and this title's pedigree (Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu) sounds rather promising.

By the way, am I the only one who isn't that enthused about Blue Dragon? It seems incredibly generic and drab to me, even for an RPG. Maybe my bias against Torayama's style is influencing my appreciation of the "gameplay", but the videos I've seen have been less than impressive, in my opinion.

/shrug.

Teleports, Minotaurs, & Hiatuses

2007-07-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

I've continued to work on leveling my WHM with the Roughnecks group and even managed to party with them and Feon on one occasion, since he wanted to hang out & get some EXP on his RSE-clad Monk (which of course got some more "compliments" from Lexxi ^_^).

The citadel doesn't leave much for a WHM in the mid 30's to worry about, other than the healing, particularly when a RDM is already handling the enfeebles. But the occasional Erase did come in handy now & then, particularly when Spoil was reducing damage output, or an unintentional tank was suffering from an Evasion Down effect. Links were another matter, but when aren't they?

I'd been preparing for 36 earlier in the week, running to Gusgen Mines for my Teleport-Holla, repurchasing the Teleport-Dem scroll I had quested & sold long ago, and trying my luck with the Teleport-Mea ??? point, which I fortunately found on my first try in the easiest spawn location in the Necropolis.

I dinged 36 a few nights ago and tried my hand at tele-taxi'ing yesterday, which was pretty fun with the exception of a couple of people who randomly tried to sabotage my endeavor. Apparently some asses are still working on getting their hats on Ifrit; that's all I'm going to say.

Anyhow, the requests for Yhoat and Altep were catching my eye, and I decided to prepare for level 38, heading out to Kazahm to begin the Elshimo marble quest for Teleport-Yhoat.

I loathe these types of quests, and hope to see less of them in future MMOs. If you want a player to feel engaged and motivated, you do not hand him/her a couple of 20-sided dice and ask him/her to roll until a 5 comes up. This is what the Tele-Yhoat quest amounted to... killing Ivory Lizards over & over with no changes in odds or any measurable progress.

When I get a quest like this, I read the following in its design: "We the developers, think the quality of your time in our game is worth crap. But thanks for paying your monthly fee, have a nice day, and... good luck!"

Am I insulted? Yeah. Did I still do it? After three or four hours of inanity, yeah I eventually got the drop, and flipped the proverbial bird to SE when I did. Yes, I know there's a lot more of this in FFXI, and I'm well aware of the intention of such design, but it doesn't mean I'll ever respect this particular style of implementation. There are other ways to keep people logged into your game.

I look forward to attempting the Teleport-Altep key item tonight. Wandering around risky zones to a definite goal is a bit more up my alley.

As I was resuming my tele-taxi service last night, I got a /tell from my old friend Gimppy, with whom I've been keeping in touch off & on since we began the game back in 2004. He was accompanying a group of friends on a CoP 2-3 run and invited me out on a whim, assuming I'd actually be further along on my CoP's.

As I hastily purchased a set of level 40 gear for WAR and ran out to the Tavnazian Safehold, I got a series of /tells from Feon who wanted to meet up with me to give me some of his gear for use and safekeeping. And I'm not just talking level 40 gear here...

Feon let me know that Cozmos and he would be away from the game for awhile, which immediately saddened me. It was difficult to process this as the CoP party was gearing up and communicating on logistics, but I did let him know, as I will here, that I'll greatly miss both of them. I trust that their time away will be recuperative, I do hope to see them again soon. I'm really flattered that he's entrusted some of his possessions to me in his absence and, at his request, will indeed put them to good use until he returns rather than stare at them in my Mog Locker (as I'm prone to do when he does such things).

The CoP mission got off to a rough start, when the first Minotaur fight ended in a party wipe (several Mortal Rays killed party members, including myself), requiring everyone to HP to the four corners of Vanadiel and run back to the safehold.

Our second attempt was quite a bit more coordinated and we'd acquired a NIN tank who did an excellent job of avoiding Mortal Ray & staying alive. I also had the pleasure of delivering the killing blow to the Minotaur.

After killing a few Fomors for our key, our NIN decided to come back as THF to pick the gate lock rather than take more time to farm, since the hour was getting late. At some point on our journey to the library, we fought one of the Stegotaurs and I neglected his Mortal Ray, earning me another death for the night. Other than that, the rest of the mission went rather well, and we completed our cutscenes up through 2-4 before passing out.

As a temporary /farewell to Feon, I'll close this entry with a picture that captures him in a nutshell. I give you Feon, solo'ing a Marid (and its Chigoes)... for shits & grins:

See you again soon, my friend.

Friends

2007-06-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Progress slowed a bit this past week when I fell ill, losing my voice for a couple of days, and taking a concomitant pair of days "off" from FFXI for sleep. WHM is currently at 33 with a healthy buffer, steadily approaching the teleport-enabled 36.

In preparation, I've worked on my reputation in the starter towns, going beyond the requisite level 4 for teleports since the task was quite dull and I wanted to get as much of it completed in one fell swoop as I could. I'm a hero in Windy now (as well as Sandy, of course), and still working on hero status in Bastok (currently level 7).

I've developed a few macro'd "sets" of WHM gear to play around with, rather than going whole hog on the +MP, since this really only benefits me when my MP sits between the base value and the boosted 100% value. Once my MP dips below base, I swap in as much +MND gear as I can afford, which seems to make a barely noticeable difference in Cure potency, but I assume assists in getting enfeebles to "stick" and boosts Bar spells a bit. To Lexxi's delight, I wear several pieces of my RSE, which usually launches her into a series of icescapades jokes.

Quantitative accomplishments and tinkerings aside, I'm encountering a social quandary in FFXI, denoted by the title of my entry. I'm not going to complain about it, but I'll admit that it simultaneously flusters and flatters me; an odd combination of emotions to juggle.

As some of you might have noticed, I have several separate but close circles of friends, and I care about them equally. They're always welcoming, endearing, and special in their own idiosyncracies, dynamics, and goals. I enjoy spending time with these groups, yet sometimes I feel I'm slighting one when favoring another and it becomes difficult to gauge how I'm being perceived by all involved. I don't want to come off as some opportunistic, Machiavellian whore, but I fear this is precisely what I appear to be when I make a decision to "cut over" to another LS for the evening depending upon how much time & energy I have, or what mood I'm in.

I know, most should be so lucky. Again, I'm not going to complain, but I do want to assure the parties involved that I do care about all of you. You're more than an enrichment for me in this game. Without my Vana'diel family, I honestly would have quit FFXI sometime in September of last year, when joyless EXP with strangers and endless solo grinding on crafts and skills were distancing me from the game. I would have missed out on so much if I hadn't been welcomed, almost simultaneously as it turns out, by the Roughnecks and DarkEden. I can't thank you enough.

At the risk of overly extending this entry, I do want to send a /salute to Minusjoker, who decided to quit the game after returning a few nights ago to confirm his feelings and gain a final sense of closure. It was a privilege to game with him. I know he'll continue to be in touch with the Roughneck group through other channels, but he will definitely be missed in Vana'diel. To seal the act, he generously donated his tradeable inventory to the Roughnecks, and gave me his Chivalrous Chain which I'll wear with pride and memory.

Farewell, Minusjoker. I hope you continue to show the same character, humor, and dedication in pursuing your accomplishments in the real world, or future MMOs for that matter. ^_^

WHM 30, Lebros Cavern, Decimation

2007-06-18T10:19:00.001-07:00

I've continued to progress in leveling WHM since my last update, hitting 30 as of last night. All of the EXP was earned via the hijinks of the RoughnecksUnited group. Surprisingly, I didn't need to use Raise until last night when a Goblin Smithy brought our deathless streak to an end, using some curiously opportunistic AI to go after Murrdoc while the party was slept.

The roster throughout the week usually included Lexxi, Murrdoc, and myself, with a rotating assortment of LS members including Raikoh, Ahmber, Quan, and Maloc.

As entertaining as the larger group was, I think the most comical night of the week was when our core trio partied with a spectacularly gimpy pickup. What made it so funny was partially sleep deprivation, but also the gradual process of discovering the gimpiness, combined with that unmistakable sense of overconfidence that clings to the newbies at these levels.

I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but a sketch will make things pretty clear. We weren't sure what the BLM was actually doing in the party. He would alternate between overnuking, staring at the mob, repeatedly checking the party, and resting for huge stretches at a time. The WAR was hitting the Mandies like... a Mandy and wasn't using his hate tools all that much, favoring the /emote channel to lay down some Iron Maiden. Yeah.

When we eventually checked the two screwballs, the equipment definitely fit the picture. A /check on the BLM revealed that he wore mostly melee equipment, not a stitch of +MP gear, and sported a set of... Courage Rings.

The WAR/MNK, while seemingly aiming in the right direction with a Moth Axe (hadn't upgraded to a Neckchopper yet) and the right subjob for tanking at this level (which is a rare sight on WAR), decided to leave his Ear, Finger, Back, and Waist slots empty.

I was a little harsh when I told Doc & Lexxi that he seemed to have "purchased his gear from the I Don't Give a Fuck kit at the Warrior Shack", but in a sense it was true. If you bother to google your job (which can't be said for Mr. Courageous BLM), at least go all the way and equip yourself completely, otherwise your research is useless.

The rest of the EXP was accumulated with people who actually knew how to play the game, which was fun in its own right, though not nearly as comical.

During our Mandy-slaying grind, I've been using Barsleepra on the faith that it does... something. Can anyone attest to what this Bar spell actually does? Shorter sleep times? It doesn't seem to really "Bar" anything, but this might be the result of lower Enhancing Magic at these levels. I'll keep using it until someone tells me it's definitely worthless.

On Thursday night, Feon invited me to an Assault run on Lebros cavern, which went well. They chipped and DoT'd away at the walls, and I cluelessly followed them around, doing the same. At one point, I mistakenly followed Cozmos to the wall that she was supposed to solo DoT, but fortunately my brief error didn't ruin the mission and I came out with 1270 more Assault points. Around 6700 to go until I can buy that Chivalrous Chain.

After the Assault run, Feon, Audessa, Cozmos (piloted by John), and Ishy (piloted by Feon), kindly accompanied me to the Temple of Uggalepih to complete my WSNM fight with Yallery Brown for the Decimation weapon skill. The battle was over quickly and I blew my 2-hour on a final Rampage to kill it off (probably needlessly, but it's not like I was going to actually use Benediction on WHM). Although I technically have the weapon skill unlocked now, I'm ashamed to say I haven't used it yet but I do hope to get a screenshot soon.

On the way back from the WSNM, we killed the Goblin Archaeologist once again, but lost the 3 gold coins as we zoned to Jugner. -_-; We then headed to Davoi to kill an Orc NM by the name of Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk for Ishy, which didn't pan out because of some changes made to the area which prevents a straight pull from the fort to the Monastic Cavern zone (you can no longer drop down the ledges on the way there).

We eventually made a straight attempt with 4 (Feon, Ishy, Audessa, and me) by clearing most of the mobs on the way to the central room, but the fight itself was quite brutal, especially when the NM used Manafont, spammed -ga spells, and was nearly immune to Silence. Subsequent attempts might require Carby pulling the NM out of the central room.

All in all, a good, productive week, with a little adventure thrown in!

P.S. Yeah, yeah, pics will be up later.

Semi Off-Topic

2007-06-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've been having a hard time keeping up with the Destructoid feed lately, but a preview article for The Darkness immediately caught my eye. After the disappointing reviews for Shadowrun, I'm seriously looking forward to this game as my next "smart" FPS. The gameplay mechanic seems sadistically interesting, the graphics are gorgeous, and ... Mike Patton performs the voice of the "darkness." How friggin' perfect is that?

Progress on WHM, Axe, Sword, Fishing, and Tomfoolery

2007-06-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Here I go feeling like a swiss army knife again.

Progress has been steady on my WHM. In preparation for more Roughneck EXP, I acquired my pair of Mycophile Cuffs on my first Mycophile kill earlier in the week. Hooray for free gear.

I reached level 25 a few nights ago with the Roughnecks, giving me the privilege of casting my first Raise on Lexxi (I swear I didn't let her die on purpose, just to try my new spell. No, seriously).

When our EXP session concluded, I indulged a sleep-deprivation-induced whim and ran back to Jeuno to gear up as a "buttersheep", the warrior vernacular for WAR/WHM.

I had to equip my MP earrings & rings, Friar's Rope, and the walmart turban, but I finally had enough MP to raise and toss on a couple of cures. I pictured running around Qufim and horrifying newbies as an elvaan Warrior in artifact armor and a turban, raising & curing random people while spamming the angel-wing fireworks. But it was so late when I got back to the tower that my plans were canceled due to lack of corpses.

Still enamored with the concept of free Sneak (I don't even want to estimate how much I've spent on Silent Oils in this game), I decided to go sneak fishing for shall shells in Cape Terrigan on the following night. The shall shell bite rate has not yet been nerfed in this area, so I decided to give it a shot.

I was greeted by a nicely laid out group of /anon tarutarus led by a female hume.

The taru's rested and got up simultaneously, in 2 sets, and had amazing timing with their nukes, casting them synchronously on every crab. Yeah... /wave RMT party. I thought a GM might be interested in watching the show, so I invited one out.

I'm fairly sure he only decloaked to me and not the RMT, since they continued to do their magic right in front of him. I found this rather humourous on his part.

Anyhow, the fishing went well and I skilled up to 32 and netted about 3 stacks of shells. I probably won't do this again for awhile since I would be better served by other methods of fishing for profit, but I now have a more accurate estimate of profit per hour on shells. And it could be worth diversifying if other markets die or temporarily stagnate.

Feon invited me to more NM hijinks last night, which was a rather pleasant way to spend the evening in Ifrit's Cauldron (of all places). The target was Tyrannic Tunnok, a scorpion NM that occasionally drops a Venemous Claw.

Since we were killing virtually everything on the way to the spawn area, I was able to simultaneously skillup my Sword to 190 (via Joyeuse) and break the latent on my Pick of Trials, clearing the way for an eventual NM fight and the Decimation weaponskill. I and Ninjax also picked up coffer keys in the process... not that I'll be hunting for my map there anytime soon. I also capped out another Merit, which I really need to begin collecting again in light of the recent Combat category adjustments.

The NM eventually popped, and we approached it with a plan. NinjaX and I would skillchain Light and Feon would call the 2-hours around 50%. We were both primed with TP, but NinjaX whiffed on the first WS... not that it would have mattered if he had connected since I followed with Mistral Axe much too quickly. In the split second between noticing the SNAFU and that 100% of my shadows had been stripped while I WS'd, the scorpion turned to me and performed Death Scissors, adding to my collection of shapshots of myself lying dead on the ground next to a NM.

The rest of the party performed fine without me, although Feon eventually died as well, leaving Ninjax as the sole melee to take the rest of the scorpion's HP away. He succeeded but the NM was stingy with the drops, unfortunately.

We ended the night with a Teleport-Holla and what is becoming a regular ritual after our DarkEden adventures: a fight with the Goblin Alchemist, closed with Feon's Mijun Gakure when possible.

Magery and Miscellany

2007-06-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

I don't have a large amount of news to post, although the past week had a few highlights.

I've been making steady progress on my black & white mage jobs, bringing BLM to 21 and clearing the way for me to level my WHM to the desired 40. I'm currently at level 23 and breathing a bit easier with Regen and a more MP-efficient Cure2. Looking forward to Raise in a few levels.

Quite a bit of my EXP has been earned in the company of RoughnecksUnited members (the formerly retired shell that was the pre-cursor to Lifthrasir and has now been revived). I've found this to be one of the most pleasant ways to level up in this game and really wish I'd met these people sooner. The two pickup parties I joined in the interim were drab & boring in comparison, even with the noob factor to keep things volatile.

The EXP was interspersed with a couple of last-minute events. I assisted Littoguy and a group of 7 others (which included Audessa and Darkronin) in the WSNM battle for his Asuran Fists. I barely had a chance to take a snapshot of Bodach before he was defeated.

Last night, I joined a group from IfritsRoyalGuard (Tog's peeps) on an "exploratory" Einherjar run.

Yeah... we died, all 12 of us, then reraised and died again, but it was fun nonetheless. Apparently the mobs in the first room will all link with their family type, regardless of location, if you attack any of them without killing the single Bird mob that pops and despawns periodically. We, of course, discovered this the hard way.

Unfortunately we were all dead when the bird popped, with the exception of a few reraised, weakened players who nearly killed it before it despawned. I'm thinking some sort of status effect needs to be in place to prevent the bird from despawning mid-battle, but that's just a theory. Sac pulls may be needed to enable others to find the bird to begin with. But we didn't see quite enough to get any solid strategies yet.

The rest of the evening was spent with Lexxi (MNK), Maloc (PLD), Quan (BLU), and Murrdoc (SMN) and a couple of party guests at Qufim Island where I went from 21 to 23 in what seemed like a short time, although the hours do go by quickly when you're in the company of good friends.

P.S. Lexxi, if you're reading this, this was the film I was talking about. And here's the other one.

On CoP

2007-05-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

I write the following rant, because I feel like I need to clarify the reason why some issues, namely the upcoming difficulty downgrades on CoP send me into cautionary tirades in various venues of FFXI conversation. I also want some folks to understand why I'm not regularly online every night.

When I began this blog, I did so with the intention of bringing something different to the table.

I wanted to chronicle my experiences as a FFXI player who is part of a demographic that is as much underrepresented as it is largely insignificant in size to the overall population in most MMOs, much less FFXI: the parent gamer. But not just any parent gamer, mind you.

Not the parent gamer whose kids are out of the house. Certainly not the "I'm so hip I play MMOs with my kids" parent gamer. I mean the sleep-deprived, newbie parent of toddlers, living in a home that still smells faintly of diapers. The parent who begins to realize the lifelong art of juggling increased priorities -- among them career, parenthood, love life, physical health, free time, and (blessed) sleep.

As a part of this odd group of gamers, I'm faced with a choice when I stare at the Playonline screen: do I want to spend the 2.5 to 3 hours of free time that I have tonight playing an MMO? And "spending" that time is really what I do. It has a cost, consisting exactly of what I could be doing rather than carrying out a virtual life in Vana'diel.

In the brief span of time between my kids' bedtime and my own, I could read one of the slew of books I've deceived myself into thinking I actually have the time to read. I could watch a good film with an appreciation that can't really be achieved during the kids' waking hours. I could continue to hone my writing, or finish the odd number of poems I began years ago. I could have a meaningful, uninterrupted conversation with my wife. Hell, maybe I could play something other than FFXI for a change.

What I think some of the other adults playing FFXI don't understand is the impact of this trade-off. We can't just come home from work, put in a few hours, log out, and go do something else in RL. Those few hours are it for some of us.

This frames the game in such a way that the quality of my RL sometimes becomes inversely proportional to the rate of my accomplishments in Vana'diel. And this realization affects how I, and others in my situation, play the game.

Sometimes, though probably not as often as I sanely should, I choose not to make the expenditure in favor of FFXI, and I shut down the machine. Sometimes I do this for extended periods. These outages usually aren't planned. They're just the result of the constant juggling act, and FFXI has to hit the floor every now & then.

But I'm patient, and realistic, and continue to chip away at the game for my own pleasure, my own little spot of Zen order in all the chaos. When I do decide to log in, my usage of the 3 hours at my disposal also becomes a bit of an economic exercise (though not an unpleasant one), between EXP, crafting/skilling, missions, and linkshell activities... when I do have a linkshell.

This sporadic and slow approach to FFXI doesn't always lend itself to strong longstanding social connections in the game.

I have several close friendships on Ifrit that I consider myself extremely lucky to be a part of, but I could just as easily see someone in my situation wandering through the game for years without gaining firm social ties. Part of it is the piecemeal nature of our commitment to the game, but much of it is also due to the social gap between those with parental priorities and those who constitute the leisure class of FFXI: the early twenty-somethings with expendable time.

We just live in very different worlds, and when we connect it's usually a serendipitous occasion.

So... I say all of this because I want people to understand that it's hard and sometimes nearly impossible for some of us to get certain things done in this game. And doing them isn't just a matter of determination, or ingenuity, or perseverance, which I know many of you have demonstrated with your considerable accomplishments. It takes either a fluke or a nearly unacceptable cost to the quality of our RL hours to complete the task.

I'm not whining. Believe me, I know what whining is... I'm simply stating the truth.

So before some of you take too hard a stance on what you consider to be acceptably or justifiably difficult in the game, separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff in FFXI, consider that there are people for whom content such as "Sea" has been out of reach for quite some time, and for perfectly valid and inevitable reasons. SE's recent announcement might very well be a good thing for them.

I'm not even really speaking for myself, since I probably still wouldn't have the time for a Limbus group. But I know there are parent gamers out there who would make significant contributions to such groups. Consider Lifthrasir's flawless Promyvion runs that I recounted awhile ago. I personally think that the largely adult leadership of that group had quite an impact on how those forays into CoP played out.

On behalf of players such as these, I say bring on the kinder gentler CoP. Let veterans' reactions to the opening gates of Sea stand as a testament to their own self-worth.

Whittling

2007-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

After reaching the 160's in sword skill and attempting some rather dangerous solo skillups in the Eldieme Necropolis, I eventually formed a bona fide skillup party in Kuftal Tunnel, which went rather well. I once again had the privilege of playing with Raikoh for awhile and got my sword skill into the 170's.

The next skillup session took place in the Boyhada Tree with Feon and the DarkEden group. They were all exhausted from a long Dynamis run, but we stayed together for awhile and I managed to reach level 183 while also whittling away the latent points on my Pick of Trials.

A few nights later, DarkEden did a series of Tier 1 assault runs on Periqia (Seagull Grounded). The AI for the NPC we were escorting through the zone was quite annoying and unpredictable. Even when he took a good path, he would stall in cleared rooms or backtrack for no apparent reason, wasting a good chunk of time. We were successful on 2 of the 3 runs, however.

Lexxi and I duo'd some EXP in the dunes last night, she on her MNK (16) and I on my WHM (19).

It was peaceful and fun, and I think the first time I've actually EXP'd with Lexxi. To my embarrassment, I kept fat-fingering my macros (laptop keyboards suck), and at one point ran out of MP on a particularly tough Goblin, resulting in death for both of us. She hit 17 early in the process, and thankfully had enough of a buffer to maintain her level. Raikoh nearly joined us when he logged in around midnight, but Lexxi and I were both passing out mid-battle and decided to call it a night.

Skillups & Savage Blade Redux

2007-05-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

On the night following the Charybdis battle, Feon (/Ishy), Cozmos, & Audessa were killing weapons and dolls in Ro'Maeve and invited me out. Audessa was working on skillups and Cozmos was breaking her sword latent. I came out with as much accuracy gear equipped as possible (and some rice dumplings) and worked on skilling up my sword from a measly 67. Quite a ways to go before 250 -_-;

The session went very well, although we encountered a rather tough weapon around the end which killed Feon, and a series of links shortly afterward killed Ishmael, but we pulled through. When I logged, my sword skill was at 113.

I skilled up a bit in Crawler's Nest on the following day, mostly killing Worker Crawlers, Killer Mushrooms, and making the occasional foray into the big EXP room downstairs to kill some Soldier Crawlers and Exorays. I logged out with a sword skill of 126.

That evening, I noticed most of DarkEden were in Quicksand Caves and assumed they were triggering columns for the Altepa Gate. In fact they'd just completed the Ruby column and were preparing to take on the NM scorpion. They invited me out and patiently waited as I made my slow way out of CN and over to Western Altepa.

When I eventually got there, the party was comprised of Feon, Ishy, Cozmos, Audessa, on the usual jobs and Theshadowdeath on THF/NIN (thanks for the correction, Feon). Shadow and I recognized one another and we assumed we'd merited together, only to have Feon remind us that we had KSNM'd together a few months ago. Yes, senility strikes again.

We passed a couple of RMT camping the NM antican that spawns in the room to the west of the WSNM area. They kindly offered assistance which elicited absolute silence on the /say channel but quite a few lol's on the /party channel.

The fight was stunningly fast. I really think we finished it under 2 minutes, possibly in 1:30 or so. I launched a pre-primed Mistral Axe for a Light skillchain and eventually got off a Rampage, but didn't have time to unload the next WS before it was over.

So in a matter of days, Cozmos has unlocked Evisceration and Savage Blade.

The remainder of the evening was spent killing placeholder wyverns for Ungur in Gustav Tunnel and disposing of the occasional meddling undead. The dragon never popped, but we had fun nevertheless.

I also had a wonderful time chatting with Lexxi, whom I missed terribly after her departure from the game. It was really nice to see her in the chat log again, and we caught up and compared notes on our toddler's behaviors, which is always entertaining ^^;

I've been making steady progress on my sword skill, killing almost every tier of mob in CN except for the EP scorpions by the Queen Crawler spawn and working my way up to 153. In the process, I was able to team up with Raikoh of Lifthrasir for awhile, which was a pleasure.

I want to eventually bring my skill to the 250 cap and put 8 merits into it, increasing the cap to the A+ level of 276. That'll round out my Great Axe, Axe, and Sword skill quite nicely, and will really potentiate the Joyeuse. The sword is very fun to use now on mobs I can actually hit (they're not kidding on that 50% proc rate), and I can imagine it'll be a blast to use in meripo and various other sundry activities.

No play for me tonight though... I'll have an early morning ahead of me tomorrow.

Ode to Joy

2007-05-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

I was resigning myself to another night here:

when Feon once again rescued me from certain boredom & torture. He proposed that I come along for a WSNM fight, which I promptly accepted. I'd never participated in an Evisceration WSNM battle before and I was up for some adventure. As I ran though the Dunes, Feon also told me to bring a sleeping bag since we'd be camping Charybdis afterwards. /joy!

I remembered to drop by the event Moogle on my way to the dressing room to get my stats:

I'll probably save the anniversary ring for either my WHM leveling or BST.

The WSNM fight went very well, although the Bat was tougher to kill than I'd expected, and more evasive:

So Cozmos is now clear for the Evisceration weapon skill! Didn't know she was fond of daggers >.>

Afterward, Ishy had to log for the night, so Feon two-boxed his character as we made our way to Sea Serpent Grotto for some camping. Our group consisted of Feon on his NIN, Feon on Ishmael as BRD, Cozmos as WHM/NIN, Audessa as RDM, and myself on WAR/NIN.

We made the circuit around the spawn area, killing pretty much all mobs that had the misfortune of popping in our path.

It only took around 30 minutes of this before Feon spotted Chary, sending my heartrate into overdrive. With my luck, I was expecting a multi-day camp, which would have been unmanageable for me. Of course as soon as Chary popped, so did every damn mob on the way there, including Zuug the Shoreleaper and some cronies.

I still couldn't believe I was actually staring at Charybdis when we got to the room. But there he was, ready for our challenge.

Unfortunately my role wasn't going to be a very active one, since the fight mostly involves DoT'ing & debuffing the hell out of the mob while the NIN tanks and gradually diminishes the mob's HP, then polishing the battle off with nukes at the end.

The fight initially went well, but Charybdis spammed Cross Attack much sooner than planned and dropped Feon to the ground. I made a lame attempt at kiting but was unprepared for the speed of Chary's attacks and died as well. So we wiped and started over.

The second fight went much more cleanly. At about 50% HP, Water weather came into effect, so I and the mages moved down into the room to avoid any potential elemental pops behind the door.

A Devil Manta add wandered over at about 20% HP, which didn't present much of a problem for me to solo, thanks to Cozmos and Audessa's vigilant multitasking support.

So you've seen the post title and read this far and probably just want me to get on with it already. Yes, indeed, they killed Charybdis, something I never imagined I would have been a part of in this game. And I got it:

And I became the elated, bewildered, and grateful owner of a Joyeuse. It's just starting to sink in today that I really do own this thing, and I'm absolutely flattered that Feon, Cozmos and Audessa would risk their time and EXP to get this weapon for me. For...me! People will never cease to amaze me in this game.

On another positive note, Lexxi and Murrdoc have both returned to the game, making the server that much richer with friends whom I trust and value. I feel my life in Vana'diel has taken a turn for the better, and I still look forward to the unexpected adventures it will bring.

Chillin & Nukin

2007-05-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

I still haven't been on frequently, much to Feon's consternation, but I did log in for a session a few nights ago and had quite a bit of fun with Feon and Cozmos in Qufim!

Cozmos powerleveled Feon & me as we nuked crabs and other sundry mobs. I'd missed Feon & Coz's loopy chemistry, and it felt nice to just relax and nuke away the time without the complications of a full party. I did, however, have a habit of stupidly killing Shock with Rasp -_-. Sorry, Feon. I've got the elemental wheel memorized now, so I hopefully won't make that mistake too often anymore.

Feon also stunned me that night be offering to camp Charybdis for my Joyeuse in the future, which would be absolutely amazing. I'm certainly glad I didn't go whole hog with Axe merits...

He reached 24 on his BLM and I reached 19. I'm now one level away from switching back over to WHM and leveling that to 40. Once that's done, I'll split my time between meriting, crafting, and leveling BST... oh and trying to get CoP done. /sigh

Update: screenshots, got 'em:

Breathing room

2007-05-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

OK, now that I have a little gil to work with, I'll be able to hop back on with more regularity.

This "hands-off" FFXI phase has actually been working out nicely over the past week. I log in periodically to do some fishing, craft up another RMT-pulverizing stock of product, keep the AH slots full, & log out. Quick, easy, and it frees me up to play a game that was recently released on Xbox arcade: Catan. It's a computerized version of the Settlers of Catan board game, which I've always wanted to play. Since my family and friends are still favoring Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, this is the only way for me to get my Catan on, for now. And it's a blast.

If any of you are on the 360 and have 12 bucks to spare for a MS point pack, I highly recommend the game. Fairly simple rules, but very dynamic gameplay, with a bit of adverserial strategy thrown in, but not enough to really call this a "strategy" game. It's more along the lines of a development game (resource management, trading, etc).

Carcassonne will be released on the Xbox arcade as well, which will be interesting to try, although it is substantially simpler and more luck-based than I'd like. I hope both of these are successful, however, since I'd love to see an Xbox version of Puerto Rico, my absolute favorite board game.

P.S. I'll turn comment moderation off for now. I had a very persistent spammer and needed to turn moderation on since I wasn't tending my blog as closely for the past few weeks.

Warez

2007-05-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

I really should be better at making money.

I mean, really. It's been 3 years, and I'm still going through the newbie cycle of extended play (EXP and other non-gil-earning activities) punctuated by periods of desperate money-grubbing. Frohike's too old for this sh**.

That said, it's not incredibly difficult to find ways to earn gil. I've stumbled across several. They're just not fabulous ways to earn it quickly and in large amounts. The methods I use are more suited to small, extended, incremental earnings that add up to large amounts over time. I should have been doing this all along, like once or twice a week, or every other day. But I didn't, and now I'm broke and bored as I wait for the gil to roll in.

Thanks for the responses to the last post. While fun, and a good way to skillup parrying/evasion on my WAR, Ule Tiger farming just didn't pay enough for the time invested. I'm back to crafting consumables for 3-7k profit per stack and making plans to level my crafting further. I'm also getting some more fishing skillups under my belt, although the 'you didn't catch anything' messages are absolutely out of control. Thanks for breaking fishing, SE. -_-; They'll fix it someday, I suppose.

Anyone tried farming Uleguerand Tigers?

2007-04-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

I'm dipping into my last 100k.

Granted my mule is sitting on a dozen stacks of Poison Potions, waiting for the stock to deplete on the AH before putting them up, and I've got a few stacks of Sleeping Potion. But until any of that comes back in the form of gil, I don't have much to spend to... make more gil.

So I'm farming while I bide my time. These tigers seemed OK at first, considering the Snow Lily goes for about 6k, but the drop rate seems bad. I had fun with about a dozen of them before I passed out, netting me a few teeth, some skins, one lily, a KS, and a BS.

Killing for gil is actually a nice change of pace from crafting/fishing, especially when the mobs are EP and make you work for the kill. It's definitely a slower method, but might be a nice alternative when I'm just not in the mood to crank out consumables.

Off of the beaten path

2007-04-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

As I settled into my dune party, preparing for another comical grind to 19 or 20 on my BLM, I was invited to tag along on some more adventures with Feon and his LS DarkEden. Ishmael had just gotten his joy toy and the group was apparently on a roll. On the menu for the evening was Cactrot Rapido, with a side-order of ZM5, time permitting.

I waved farewell to a new friend I had made in the party, a Scottish player by the name Fushia, who already has a petulance belying her level and rank. The server had better clear a path for her ^_^. Feon's group kindly teleported me to the Holla crag and I took the slow hike back to Sandy to get dressed for the fight, hoping for the new title we all coveted.

The {Gather together} stage took a bit of time, but we ended up with 8 participants, most of whom brought their NPCs to spread out the 10k Needles damage. Feon handed out the Icarus Wings and we established weapon skill orders for Light.

We didn't need to drag our half-dead Sabotender around for long before Rapido ran to the rescue. The fight was lightning-fast, and it ended with most people dead. Fortunately, Rapido was one of them.

After the fight, Cozmos, Feon, and Littoguy stuck around for a trip to Ifrit's Cauldron to finish up my last ZM5 fight and to assist Littoguy in getting a key item. The fight with the Opos from hell went pretty well, although I'd inadvertently killed my Provoke STNPC macro, so Cozmos had to deal with one of the monkeys a while longer than I would have liked.

When we arrived back at the Holla crag, Feon noticed the spawn point for the Goblin Archaeologist was up and giving the message "You hear a voice from right beneath the surface of the ground." So he popped it, and I ran back to help kill it off before logging out for the night.

On the following night, DarkEden was getting ready to have some adventure in Den of Rancor. Littoguy needed to kill a NM by the name of Carmine-tailed Janberry.

But first on the agenda was a Leviathan Prime fight, which I had somehow missed in the chat log so I merrily accompanied them to the Cloister of Tides and stood in front of a giant crystal wondering why I couldn't go where they were going. Frohike noob moment #3123.

After the fight was over, Feon and Cozmos came back and Escaped me to the temple entrance. We killed every Wespe we came across on our way back to the Den of Rancor, but none of them wanted to drop the pop item for Death from Above.

We wreaked havoc in the Den of Rancor for awhile, and it felt good to run around with this area like we owned the place, killing most of the Tonberries in sight. Thankfully, I'd remembered to bring my Pick of Trials this time around, so Ninjax and I were Light chaining with Dragon Kick and Mistral Axe to work off my latent.

Janberry didn't take too long to pop and was a fairly fast kill, dropping the Asklepios for Littoguy on our first attempt.

Having some time left to kill, the group made its way to Bastok for some tuning forks and we gathered at the Cloister of Tremors for a Titan Prime fight, which also went well, although our two Tarus died to what I'm assuming was bad Geocrush timing.

We established a new record for the fight! 3 minutes, 14 seconds.

After this whirlwind of adventure, I ended up with a few things in my inventory.

I felt badly when I noticed this one:

Feon had lotted on this and I had neglected to pass on it, and somehow it ended up going to me anyway ><;

A huge thanks to Feon & Cozmos et al for letting me in on their adventures. I definitely needed a vacation from the dunes for a few days, and it was good to meet some more members of the group.

Black Magery

2007-04-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

Another job through the dunes. Almost. I hit 17 on BLM last night, starting out a few EXP below 15. And yes, there was the usual procession of subligars, newbies, overhunting, and powerleveling that we've all grown so fond of out here.

As of my last post, I had solo'd BLM to 12, and actually had quite a bit of fun until things started killing me too quickly when Bind wouldn't stick (or stick long enough). EXP in parties after that point was pretty uneventful, and I'd venture to say quite boring actually.

Things get more interesting in the later levels no doubt, when memorizing your elemental wheel becomes a bit more important, and stuff like link control and cure assistance come into play more often. But it's a snoozefest from down here; I won't lie. For some reason I find it more monotonous than WHM, if only because I'm not as directly responsible for keeping the party alive. I'm sure it'll pick up at some point.

In any case, no more bloodwarping for me! Woohoo!

I expect to take this job to 20 or so to ensure that I can at least go to 40 on WHM before making the decision to take that job any further. I must admit that, with the state of my current shell, BST is starting to draw my attention. I'll probably start poring over Halifirien's blog archives when I finish up WHM.

During the drudgery of the dunes, I was treated to a /tell from Tog, a long-time FFXI blog lurker, commenter, and just recently a blog writer. He let me in on his crazy social shell, and powerleveled one of my parties for a bit while exchanging inscrutable conversation over /say with a shell-mate. Good to meet you and your friends, Tog.

Feon, Raikoh, and Gimppy continue to check in and seem to be doing well. Jingy from Lifthrasir looks to be making a return to the game after an extended hiatus. I'm sure I'll find him leveling MNK when I log back in tomorrow night ^_^.

Some people play with their Wii

2007-04-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

I'm playing with my whammy bar:

I just needed a break and had pre-ordered this awhile ago. I'm a Guitar Hero noob, and I'm completely hooked. The game also introduced me to a band I'd never heard of before. The song was Freya, and felt like a tune from the Black Sabbath era, and it sounded...really good. I'd forgotten how much I liked some of that early 70's style metal. I was surprised to discover that the song was by a recent band, with a debut album early last year. I've been listening to them almost non-stop since I've downloaded their album. Good stuff!

Another distraction has been Zelda: Twilight Princess which my son and I have been playing on the cube since we don't have a Wii yet. We both prefer it to Wind Waker, which we finally finished a couple of weeks ago. He still likes me to retell the final battle with Lord Ganon though ^_^.

Anyway, I'll be back sometime this week. I just needed to take a step back for a while.

See you soon.

Dissolution

2007-04-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Sun's a settin'
This is what I'm gonna sing
Sun's a settin'
This is what I'm gonna sing
I feels the blues a comin'
Wonder what the blues will bring...

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been fumbling in the sunset of Lifthrasir for the past week or so.

A mere four days after we completed our third Promyvion run, Murrdoc announced that he was taking a hiatus from the game. I was really sorry to see him go, but I totally understood the need to take a break. After all, I've done so myself a handful of times over the past few years, and Murrdoc had been playing this game for at least as long as I had. Taking a month off here & there can be a good thing.

However, in a matter of a couple of days, Murrdoc's character vanished from the linkshell community roster. And not just 'greyed out because I resigned from the community' gone. I mean... gone.

The shell has been almost entirely vacant ever since.

A few people log in briefly, but for the most part, I've been watching the imaginary tumbleweeds roll by, and silently saying goodbye to the people who may never come back.

In an obvious act of denial, I tried to coordinate ZM4 runs for the folks who needed it, and only Raikoh and I signed up, resulting in 3 consecutive weekly cancellations of the event. I tried to be angry and indignant about it, but all I could muster was sadness.

Something happened between that Dem run and Doc's departure, and I never really got the low-down, and probably never will. Which is fine by me actually. I really don't want to know what transpired.

This sounds cloyingly sappy, but I honestly can't find another way to articulate it: I hadn't realized how much of my heart I had invested in this group before they went away. I'm also saddened that I never got the chance to let them all know how special they were as a group, how uncharacteristic and refreshing it was to find a tight-knit group of balanced adults playing this game, people who would actually get together for dinner and play with their kids. It was my privilege to have been with them for the time that I was given.

It is a game after all, and people, especially adults with kids, move on.

However, the relationships we forge here are anything but virtual. As casual as they may be, they become a small part of the fabric of our lives. And it hurts to see that part fade away, almost inexplicably.

It's unfortunate that it had to happen like this, with such a whimper, and such a quiet, unresolvable resentment hanging over those who remain. That sounds dramatic, but I'm trying to be honest.

I've always carried a certain amount of pride with me when it comes to this game.

I pride myself on toughing it out where some folks would have probably quit and moved on to WoW or something. I still look back on my first post and feel the full weight of that moment at the waterfall, when I honestly wondered how much further I could go with this game.

However, I've realized that behind my pride is a sadness at the friends I've seen come and go in Vana'diel. A sort of ongoing mourning for the people who couldn't keep going with me, even as they were the ones who kept me going.

Not all of my friends are gone. There are several people on my list, and they know who they are, who continue to check in with me and make me feel like I'm more than a mote on an endless chain of redundant servers. Know that I value each and every one of you.

I'll continue to chip away at new facets of FFXI. But I won't lie and say that the wind hasn't left my sails a little, for the time being.

I'll miss you, Lifthrasirians. And I really hope to see some of you again. In the meantime, you know where to find me.

The adventure continues.

Sun's a risin',
This is gonna be my song.
Sun's a risin',
This is gonna be my song.
I could be blue but
I been blue all night long.
Langston Hughes, Hey

Contrasts

2007-03-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

I got to see both sides of Valkurm last night.

The side we all enjoy to decry was actually pretty comical. The party consisted of a random assortment of melee, all rank 1 or 2, at least a couple of sub-less players, and an anon player whom I discovered was to be our backup healer. I didn't really check anyone, and frankly didn't care. The night was young, and if things went wrong there would be plenty of time to recover.

The party self-destructed within 20 minutes.

We were having fun with flies at the outpost, which gave me some good practice on my Poisonas, and a retrospective note-to-self to use Barwatera more often to mitigate Cursed Sphere damage. But the players were just kinda clueless. One of them had to leave within 5 minutes of starting and was wondering what job to bring in, NIN being one of the options. He was a melee, so it didn't really matter, but the PLD stated NIN would "make a better tank". Ooook then...

Meanwhile the puller was grabbing anything by the OP that con'd...anything. The taru "backup healer" ran out of MP at almost every fight and grabbed agro constantly. The puller of course eventually got a sheep, which AOE'd as I was running in for a Barsleepra. It put everyone to sleep and pecked away at a single player (not the PLD, incidentally) killing him pretty quickly. We eventually defeated the sheep with 3 melee before one of them logged randomly. The dead guy lay there for quite awhile before I asked about his home point (as if I had to). Jeuno.

The NIN who showed up to the OP refused the invite, probably because of the epic sheep battle he'd just witnessed.

When the party disbanded, the /anon backup healer remained anon and put his flag up. That's when I checked him. He wore a random assortment of melee gear with a few +INT here & there, no rings, no earrings, no hand gear, no waist gear. I had to explain the anon status to him, and explained how to turn it off. Once it was off, he checked as a subless 18 RDM. He then proceeded to do his version of a /shout...only in the /say channel.

"I need a party."

"I will main heal."

Every 10 seconds or so, with only the two of us as an audience. Yeah, I was scared too.

Anyway another invite came within minutes and I accepted. Thankfully this party consisted of higher-ranked players (8-10), with a couple of new players, one of whom still needed a map to the area ^_^. Zorrandor had volunteered to help me out with my next party, and these folks needed a tank, so he came out on his PLD (18). We headed out to the secret beach, only to find a surprise PL waiting for us.

ORZ

Fortunately, the PL got tired and left within a half hour. I shared healing and buffing duties with a SMN, who incidentally loved to spam the /p and /s channels with dorky RPish dialog with her avatars >.>;

{/echo} {Please check it.}

But it didn't interfere with my job or hers so I didn't mind so much. It's just fascinating to see what levels of geekdom people can take their fantasy worlds to ^_^. I know, pot kettle black, right?

The puller was kinda crazy, but I liked it that way. I let her pull at 100MP just to see if I could swing it, and for the most part it was fine although it did cause me to drink more Melon Juice than I was accustomed to, and any post battle Curagas would drain my pool down to 20ish MP. But I figured I'd better get accustomed to the faster-paced fighting that would lie ahead, juggling resting time with the right amount of cures/buffs etc.

The party went really really well, and I dinged 19 & change before I needed to log for some sleep.

White magery

2007-03-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

Since I'm growing a bit bored with my Warrior job (hey, it only took me 3 years), I've picked up WHM again at level 13. I took a couple of evenings to re-orient myself with the job: reading all the FAQs, muling and updating equipment, updating my spells, creating a new macro register, buying juice ingredients, and selling my Promy gear in a desperate attempt to compensate for my inevitable loss of 300k gil to an Astral Ring purchase.

I'm Elvaan. I had to do it.

I had a grand time in the dunes last night, getting from level 13 to a little over 1k TNL until 16.

Within seconds of arriving in Sandy with my flag up, I received an invitation which was a bit inauspicious at first, but I tried to remain positive and I'm glad that I did: BLM,WHM,WHM,BST,MNK. Although the leader (BST) first assumed that the MNK would be de facto tanking, he eventually found a PLD for the 6th slot.

Hiking all the way from Sandy without benefit of bird or OP warp, I rediscovered how excruciatingly slow transit can be at this level. Finally getting to the Valkurm outpost alive felt like a feat unto itself, although I was kicking myself for having forgotten Signet since the OP was owned by Windurst at the time.

We camped at the southeastern corner of I8, killing VT and IT Snippers for the remainder of the evening. The pulling could have been a bit faster, but we were competing with a couple of parties in the area, and I actually appreciated the pace since it allowed me some time to get familiar with the job again. The other WHM was subjob-less and had a substantially lower MP pool, so he enfeebled and backup healed while I main-healed.

I must confess that I had a couple of ACK! moments where I was completely flubbing my macros, and mistargeting, and letting nerves interfere with my performance, but for the most part I'm confident that I did a good job. No one died on my watch.

I'm getting a feel for how much juice to drink (kinda overdid it at first), and how long it takes to regain MP to a passable level for a pull, etc. I never hit a point where dipped below 25% MP, and for the most part the juice and cookie-resting kept my pool at a steady 60-80%.

I had a lot of fun, even when the backup WHM eventually had to go to bed. It was a very different feeling, this remote responsibility for the survival of the party, and I may very well end up taking this job past the 37 levels I was begrudgingly planning. Who knows...

Making your screen pretty...

2007-03-15T03:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been so tardy in updating and responding to comments. I'm currently writing this in the airport as I wait for my flight back home. It's been a long week -_-

I've been asked by several people to explain how I got the 1440x900 resolution to work and how to upgrade the UI.

Before I proceed, I should warn you that none of this is sanctioned by SE, and can introduce glitches into your game if not done properly. Always write down or record original registry key values before editing them and back up your DATs before changing them. Please.

OK, first the easy one. Resolution. Using the FFXI Config menu enables you to expand the 'Overlay Graphics' resolution to a pretty high degree. However this only affects the menus, fonts, windows, etc. This, at least to my understanding, does not increase the resolution of the actual graphical content (i.e. the 'background resolution'). The most you'll get via FFXI Config is 1024x1024.

This is why I edited the registry to get the Overlay and Background to have identical resolutions.

Hold down the Windows and R buttons to bring up the Run command. Type regedit in the box and click OK.

You'll see an Explorer style directory. The following is the path to get to the FFXI registry:

My Computer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
PlayOnlineUS
SquareEnix
FinalFantasyXI

As soon as you get to FinalFantasyXI and select it, you'll see a list of 21 registry entries, ranging from 0000 to 0033, and a (Default) which we won't be touching. In the Data column for entries 0001 and 0002, you'll notice the familiar values that you set as the 'overlay graphics' resolution (they'll be listed in parentheses).

Now notice that entries 0003 and 0004 have the values you set for the 'background' resolution (1024x1024 for most people with large monitors). These are what you're going to edit.

Double-click 0003, which will bring up an "Edit DWORD Value" window. Toggle the Base button from Hexadecimal to Decimal. This is important, so go slowly and make sure you've done this. Once in Decimal mode, change the Value data to the desired horizontal resolution (in my case, I set this to 1440). Click OK.

Double-click 0004, and repeat the process (remember that Decimal base) and set the value to your desired vertical resolution (in my case, 900). Click OK.

If you want to get rid of the annoying flickering of distant backgrounds, you can also bump up your mip mapping value in this registry. This is updatable in key 0000. The suggested value for smoothing distant textures is 4. This enables you to turn off anisotropic texture filtering on your card to improve performance.

Close your registry editor, and you're done.

If you'd like to know what the rest of the registry keys do, check the allakhazam guide. Note that some of these options are now updatable via the FFXI config screen.

Ok, now you want your fonts to look all nicey nice, so it's time to download a .DAT pack. I got mine from FFXIdats.com. I browsed the application skins section and found what I wanted here.

Once you download the pack, look at the ROM files and folders in the set and be sure to back up the original SE versions of these files to a separate directory before you mess with them. Whenever a .DAT mod even touches a directory, I personally back up the entire directory before moving the new files over.

This is because any subsequent updates from SE can potentially introduce glitches with your custom DATs. For instance, the latest update made some changes to status icons, and I had the custom set of status icons included with the aforementioned pack. Cancelling 'Defender' would bomb my Playonline session until I restored the original DATs.

Be sure to peruse the readme file on the .DAT pack. It will explain the function of the files, enabling you to pick & choose which ones you want, and it will tell you how to upgrade your window style as well.

Voila. Hope this is enough information!

Light of Dem

2007-03-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

I just want to quickly report that Lifthrasir was successful in getting through Promyvion Dem on Saturday night. With the exception of a party wipe at the 'bottleneck' area on the third floor (agro'd a Gorger and Wanderer/Weeper), we had a fairly straightforward run. I took point on the sprint though the gauntlet and made it to the spire zone with 120HP left. {Adventure}!

I've left Frohike sitting in the Tavnazian Safehold as I attend a conference in Orlando. Yes, I'm in a Disneyworld resort, and yes, it is an exceedingly bizarre location for a convention. >.>

I'll be quite busy tomorrow but hope to upload pictures soon; love...Lufaise Meadows!

Congratulations to everyone on the team who made the run a success.

Addendum: Here's the photo set (click the image to launch the set).

Good timing!

2007-03-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

Looks like Lifthrasir decided to get the CoP stuff underway at the right time. The current update has made a couple of adjustments:

Players will no longer lose experience points when KO’d in Chain of Promathia mission battlefields.
It is now possible to seal memories and reset Promyvion missions using the “Shattered Telepoint” found at the crags.

It also looks like it's a good time to take up some lowbie jobs and get them leveled. Namely WHM for me:

The following bonuses have been added to the Signet effect.

- Increased Healing HP while resting
The initial value for Healing HP (based on the character’s level), as well as the incremental jumps in Healing HP (based on the character’s maximum HP), will be increased.

- No TP loss while resting
While this bonus is in effect, TP will not be lost while resting.

- Bonus experience in small groups

- Increased defense and evasion against attacks from your auto-attack target

I was wondering when/if they would spruce up Signet to be as advantageous as Sanction, and I think it's a fair idea, especially if SE wants to continue to draw new players into the game. However, considering how many RMT countermeasures they are taking with this update, they might not want to make it too easy to level.

For example, some exploitable quests have now gained level requirements, so the prices of some scrolls will probably rise again, making it easier for legitimate players to make some cash on these quests without competing with RMT bottom-feeders... assuming those bottom-feeders don't level too quickly.

If you read the rest of the update, you'll notice a large number of adjustments to drops, drop rates, and additional pop items, a sign that SE is actually trying to do something about bot-campers since they're obviously not able to hit 100% of them with the ban stick. Good to see.

Light of Mea

2007-03-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

Last night, Lifthrasir had a very successful Promyvion Mea run. We were all a bit saddened that Murrdoc wouldn't be joining us, and not necessarily for the selfish reasons of enjoying his company and help... He was dealing with one of his dogs, who had become very ill, and probably lethally so. I know what it feels like to go through something like that, and my heart goes out to him.

The run to the spire went extremely well. Not a single death was suffered by anyone in the group, although we unfortunately lost Lexxi to a disconnect between floors. She had been graciously escorting us to the spire, since she's already on CoP chapter 2-3.

Unlike the Holla run, we had to sprint through quite a gauntlet of enemies on the final floor. And in a strange reversal of the last Promy, I neglected to take snapshots until we were actually at the spire and in the BC fight. Go figure.

The final battle went extremely well, despite a couple of un-hystero'd Carousel moves. We barely got through our hysteroanima rotation before the battle was over, setting a new time record.

A special thanks to Zorrandor for his navigational skills, and to Quan for stepping up to the plate and coordinating the anima rotation. Good job, everyone!

ZM4 Prep

2007-02-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

Some of you took a peek at my pictures before I could post. Tsk. Tsk.

Lifthrasir had a very successful and rather short lantern-farming session in Temple of Uggalepih. I think we were 4/4 on the drop from the Maledictors! Of course I lost all lots, once again. But I don't picture myself going through this mission again once Lifthrasir has completed it, so no worries.

Dr. Tran

2007-02-27T22:08:00.000-08:00

Raikoh introduced me to Dr. Tran, and I thought maybe some of you might enjoy it. Warning, this is definitely not work safe (and neither are the other eps):

There are a few more episodes linked on lonesausage.com.

Enjoy XD

Assault

2007-02-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

While I was preparing for another marksmanship snoozefest, Feon invited me to do some Assault runs with him and Cozmos.

After much muling, I picked up my orders for Leujaoam Cleansing and we headed off to Azouph Isle. Those worms are uh, nasty... After Feon died on a poorly timed Gastric Bomb, we aborted the mission and headed back to town.

For our second attempt, we switched to Excavation Duty. We got the last wall down to 10% HP before the time ran out. While chipping away at the walls, we couldn't help but notice the occasional comedic whiffs:

Oops, missed that wall, better have some sushi!

We used our third license to attempt another Leujaoam Cleansing, but both Feon and I died on the 2nd or 3rd worm.

Despite the failed missions, I definitely had fun and can see the appeal of Assault. I'd like to try these again soon. I think our problems on both missions can probably be remedied by a couple of extra bodies.

yawnMarksmanship

2007-02-26T10:52:00.001-08:00

My marksmanship has been 0 for much too long, so I decided to snipe some bunnies as a nice chillout activity on the day after the promy run. I skilled up to level 5 or so before noticing that my latest mob wasn't dying as quickly as usual... and had a funny name.

Awesome skillup mob! But skillups were all he dropped, unfortunately.

Light of Holla

2007-02-26T09:28:00.000-08:00

Lifthrasir has set up a schedule of 'family nights', where we set aside each Tuesday and Saturday night to pause our individual projects (crafting, leveling, meriting, etc.) to do events that will benefit several members of the LS or the LS as a whole.

Our first project is to get the Promyvions underway since several of our members, myself included, have yet to clear these. So Murrdoc coordinated a run on Promyvion Holla on Saturday. We had farmed the psycho and hystero anima a couple of nights before and everyone was reminded to bring poison pots and holy waters to the event.

We steadily made our way to the final floor under the direction of Murrdoc (who had a map) with Zorrandor as our widescanner.

We did catch aggro here & there, which I assume is unavoidable in places (especially at the fences), but we fought our way through, mostly without incident. The path to the final receptacle was the most treacherous and two of our members died as we fought a Seether and a few other empties (a Thinker might have been among them, can't quite remember).

Fortunately another group had arrived at the receptacle before us and told us to rest & recover while they cleared it. Once cleared, everyone ported to the top floor and we joined up as an alliance for the final run to the spire. The path was amazingly empty and we all made it without any problems.

We let the other party go first while Murrdoc formulated the battle plan and Poison pots & holy waters were distributed as needed. Doc would be calling the animas, and we established a rotation, although I stupidly missed the part where he said he'd be calling them by first initials. I assumed we would just be calling out the animas as we used them and he'd be calling out the anima to use, leaving it to people to keep track of who threw the last one.

Despite my missing the first Hystero toss because of this brain fart, the battle went extremely well and we claimed the new record (since the last server maint, I guess).

A big congrats to the team, and 3 cheers for Murrdoc for coordinating the run!

P.S. After the run, we discovered that the other team had a SNAFU (the BLM warped accidentally) and had to re-attempt. I hope they made it on the second try -_-;

Ah, much better

2007-02-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

Flickr limits my res, but I can take shots in 1440x900 now.

A few .DAT edits for the UI and maps, and some registry editing for Mip-mapping level 4 (to get rid of that damn flickering in the distance) and setting both background and overlay to 1440x900, & I think I'm good to go!

And it only took me 3 years to upgrade... Shut up, I'm old.

Attention Morons of Ifrit

2007-02-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

Sis Kebabi are 24k per stack here, assuming not too many of you participated in Besieged and lost our AC.

I figured this little farce market died a long time ago... but it's still trucking along slowly.

Guess I'll be keeping a stack in there every once in awhile, for free moron gil.

Headstones

2007-02-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

During the crazy merit session on the last post, Feon "gently" reminded me that I needed to get moving on the Zilart Missions ^_^; I've been on ZM5 for awhile now, and it is indeed time that I progress a bit further. He offered to get me through the NM headstones if hit the solo ones first, so I finished up my Water and Earth fragments (I'd done the Ice fragment out of boredom a long time ago).

Last night, we (Feon, Cozmos, Ishmael [2-boxed], and I) got through the Cape Terrigan, Zitah, and Behemoth's Dominion headstones mostly without incident although I lost my sneak/invis in Terrigan at one point and managed to agro a goblin (/blush). I also 2-houred on the shadow in Terrigan, without warning Feon, but the mob was swinging an extremely slow Great Sword, so keeping shadows up wasn't too much trouble.

A big {Thank you} to Feon and Cozmos for donating their time in helping me with this mission. Hope to do the final Ifrit's Cauldron run soon.

We rushed back to Al Zahbi in time to get into the undead Besieged and I acquired .5 more skillups on my Great Axe.

But Frohike, I thought you hated Besieged!

Again, it's an OK event if I've already accomplished other stuff for the evening. It's when the event interferes with my EXP that I get annoyed. Can't have my cake & eat it too, I suppose.

P.S. Yes, my screenshots suck. I'll be playing the PC version soon, so hopefully I'll be able to use a better screen capture tool, and spruce up a few things (*cough*windower*cough*).

1250 DMG, Chain 52

2007-02-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

This is just for my own records.

Highest Rampage damage on EXP mob: 1250, 2/13/07, Heraldic Imp, Aggressor + Berserk up

Highest EXP chain: 52, 2/14/07, Bhaflau Thickets, South Camp, killed by Sleep. BRD WHM RNG WAR WAR NIN.

That last party raked in 4 and a half merits in approximately 4 hours.

OK, back to work.

Pathos (And the People Who Try to Use It)

2007-02-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

My crafting and seeking session was cut short after getting to level 4, when I received an invitation to a primarily Japanese party. Roster was: BRD, RDM, SMN, WAR, WAR, RNG. They told me we were heading to Nyzul Isle, a staging point I hadn't flagged yet, but they were OK with that and told me to follow them.

I initially assumed that we were going to take the Colibri camp but this group went to a different spot. Instead they headed to the Caedarva Mire (5) exit (can't think of another way to name it, see exit 5 on the map ^_^), which brought us to Hediva Isle. We stayed in the general vicinity of the zone and killed Heraldic Imps. The occasional Mind Flayer add would force us to zone to despawn the mob, but the BRD and RNG seemed to have an OK time pulling.

BRD-style pulling & queuing doesn't work so well with Amnesia, but we managed to pull a chain 15 at some point during the session.

About an hour after we arrived, another group unsuccessfully attempted to camp on top of us, and I received a /tell from an English player asking us how long we would be there. I told him the party was JP and I really had no clear read on how long they planned to stay... though it would probably be awhile. His response was,

Yeah, I noticed they're JP, and you guys are meriting [pregnant pause... queue violins]. And we're just trying to get to 75.

Boo... hoo?
I mean, I understand the frustration. However,

A camp claim is a camp claim; I don't give 2 s**ts what level you are.
I'm not the leader, talk to him.
I don't speak Japanese, and even if I did, I think I'd have a hard time convincing the party to leave a 10k per hour spot, regardless of how many violins or pregnant pauses I use.

I thought ignoring him was successful, but he shot another /tell an hour later asking if we were done yet.

I couldn't find the auto-translate for {I don't speak any Moron}, so I simply replied No, and we proceeded to EXP for another hour or so, netting us approximately 30k.

At the end of our session, the group guided me to the staging point and was kind enough to congratulate me for something I should have solo'd weeks ago. They were a good group of people, and I hope my name stands out... maybe... the next time they're looking for a Warrior.

I spent 3 merits on upgrading my Axe skill once again, bringing my cap to the A+ level of 277. Subsequent merits will go into Critical Attack and the Aggressor/Berserk timers.

Gone Smithing

2007-02-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

I've barely logged in since the middle of last week, mostly because I'm distracted by Viva Pinata again, and FFVI has also been taking up some of my time. I'm getting ready to do some more fishing... My lame attempt at skilling up in Zeruhn Mines was just that, netting me more Tricolored Carp and Moat Carp than Black Eel, so I decided to target the bass in Rolanberry Fields.

But to do this effectively, I need a Frog Lure, which no one bothers to craft since its the HQ below Shrimp Lure. It requires 46 Alchemy, check. 9 Smithing... dang.

Since I need Smithing to progress further in Alchemy anyway, I've decided to skill up a bit. I ran back & forth between the Al Zahbi AH (for crystals) and the NPC named Ndego, buying Copper Ore and Tin Ore to make Bronze Ingots. Then I used the ingots to make sheets and skill to level 3.1 before logging out.

I got a bite for a merit party while I was puttering around, but it fell through.

Ah the exciting life of a 75 WAR these days. >.>

More BCNM fun

2007-02-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

The past two evenings have consisted of multiple Operation Desert Swarm runs, which Feon's group was kind enough to allow me to attend, even when my seals had run out. I feel like I can do that particular KSNM in my sleep now... and it offered me a chance to really get the knack with rotating Utsusemi Ichi and Ni.

I never had much practice with this rotation as a NIN since I sort of bailed on that job as soon as I hit 37. And most merit parties only drop 4 or 5 of my shadows before hate gets pulled elsewhere temporarily.

In this KSNM, I got to solo at least 2 scorpions in a row and really get my Ichi - Ichi - Ni - Ichi timing down, which was really quite fun.

We also took a couple of stabs at Copycat, which was rather interesting. This BCNM will charm members in the group on a regular rotation, starting with the member who traded the orb. The first attempt was a bit of a mess, but we toughed it out on the second for the eventual kill, though 3 members died before it was all over. Took about 20 minutes O_O;

We got a couple of 'big' drops on the ODS runs: a damascus ingot, and a damascene cloth. Profit from these will be split amongst the group, which again was very generous of them considering I brought no orbs to the table. The RA/EX "500WS" weapons (not sure what else to call them) were free lots, and I eventually ended up with a Heart Snatcher, a Senjuinrikio, and a Rampager. I put the dagger and katana into my locker for now, but do plan to unlock the great axe latent for fun.

On an unrelated note, I'm a bit appalled at how badly broken fishing has become on our server. Bite rates have been 'adjusted' in certain zones, which is more of a detriment to legitimate fishers than the botters SE is so ineptly trying to target. Prices on fish continue to plummet as the market is saturated with bots that can constantly pull catches such as Black Sole on a low level fisherman and continue to thrive.

As annoying as the RMT are in the other crafts, I just hope SE doesn't plan to make similarly asinine 'adjustments' in other areas. Could you imagine if they increased the breakage rate on certain synths that bots currently exploit? Wouldn't be such a great fix, would it?

Multitasking

2007-02-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Merits

I did in fact end up meriting with Feon and his posse on Friday night, taking the south camp at the Mamool Ja staging point and EXP'ing away the hours. I got up to the 3 merit mark and about 8k into my next merit before we called it a night. It was another BRD-pull style party, so I had more fun with the voke <stnpc> macro ^_^

I spent 3 of the merits on another Axe upgrade, for a total of +6 skill so far. I think I'll stop at 4 upgrades there, in case I do end up meriting sword someday.

Shopping

The next evening consisted of selling off old gear and putting a few remaining Poison Pot stacks into the recovering market. I was able to finally upgrade my Tarasque Mitts to the +1 version, an item on my shopping list that had been nagging me for quite some time.

"Crafishing"

After reaching 30 in fishing last week it occurred to me that I could be profit-fishing a bit, even though the fish market has reportedly taken quite a beating from relentless botting. Rather than go on dedicated fishing sessions, however, I've decided to build them into my Cobalt Jellyfish expeditions to Bibiki Bay: hit the shop at 1AM, synth all jellies into Mercury, zone to Buburimu and fish up Shall Shells & Bluetail between sessions. And the shop holiday (Lightningday) becomes a fishing day.

It's a great way to kill that 'idle' feeling when I'm stuck out there waiting for the shop to open again, and it supplements the income. It's not huge, but certainly better than twiddling my thumbs.

Operation Desert Swarm

I was in the middle of such a session when Minusjoker invited me to a KSNM 30 (Operation Desert Swarm). It was a party of 6 and we each brought an orb. Our setup was BLM RDM WHM SAM PLD WAR. The initial plan was to open with Sleepga, have the PLD and SAM pull a Scorp while I solo'd another at a distance, while the RDM and BLM handled the awakening mobs and supported the WHM in her healing.

The first attempt went badly when we carried out the plan in the main room. I managed to solo 2 of the scorpions, but AOE kept awakening the others and killed off the WHM pretty quickly. On the next attempt, we decided to pull the scorpions into the hallway to the BC. It went better, although I still didn't manage to pull mine quite far enough into the hall, and a couple of the Scorps also awoke more quickly than the others. 0/2 so far.

The third attempt was a near-perfect run. We pulled the first 2 scorpions all the way back to the entrance and battled from there, running back to the room for refills. Minusjoker was still noticing that the same 2 mobs would awaken before we had finished off the initial mobs, so we decided to hit those first on the next attempts. Something caused this third attempt to go FUBAR, but I don't recall what it was. In any case, we were ready for the next 3.

The WHM suggested that the SAM assist me when he and the PLD had finished off their mob, then switch back when mine was down. From that point on we had our formula and completed the remaining BC's cleanly. Unfortunately there were no big money drops, but we're now all very familiar with this KSNM and will certainly burn more seals on it again.

As I warped around to resume my fishing, I got an invitation from Feon to complete San D'Oria mission 7-1. Of course, I accepted ^_^

Prestige of the Papsque

It was a quick trip through Bostaunieux Oubliette, and the pace picked up considerably on the last stretch to the West Ronfaure zone when Feon made an announcement ... "Whatever you do, don't stop running." He gunned it through mob agro, making quite an impressive chain of Gespents and Hetacomb Hounds.

The NM Orc fight went well, though I was stunned at the Orc's speed at the end of the fight when Hundred Fists seemed more like Millisecond Fists and I couldn't pull hate off of Feon. Voke & Warcry did nothing, and of course ... being the zombie that I was, I forgot to 2-hour, which would have been quite effective (/slap me). So Cozmos had to pump quite a few HP back into Feon before the Orc died.

I got my key item and returned to Sandy, thanking the group, still amazed at how friendly some folks can be in this game. I mean, it was 12AM PST >_>;

To close the night, I pumped a few more stacks of Poison Pots into the AH before the price deflated from 20k again, and passed out around 12:45AM... only to be awakened by my baby daughter who experienced her first earache at 2AM.

Yep, I'm just a wee bit exhausted this morning.

Fishing. Shopping. Skilling.

2007-02-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

I called in sick yesterday due to a stomach bug, and the wife and kids had gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the morning, so I found myself with some free time. However I couldn't commit time to an EXP party for obvious reasons. Somehow I don't think "AFK. Barfing. Back in a minute" would go over well in meripo.

So I kept fishing up Ogre Eels for fishing skillups and synthing them into Venom Dust for alchemy skillups. I moved to the South Gustaberg sea cliff, since the auction house was in much closer proximity there, and the skillups in both crafts slowly trickled in.

Incidentally, I was finally able to speak with Faulsey, a fellow blogger on my server who is never on when I am. And it was a pleasure chatting with him, as usual.

When I logged in for the evening, I finished off my skillup session by reaching 62 in Alchemy and 30 in Fishing nearly simultaneously and warped to Aht Urghan for some shopping. Barone Cosciales had dropped to 100k and Assault Earrings were holding at 400k, so purchasing this pair of gear didn't put me in the poor house.

If felt good to finally polish up some of my equipment and cross some items off of my list. Next in line will be the Potent Belt, but I'm still waiting for the Poison Pot market to recover from an undercut bomb earlier this week (20k to 15k... yikes).

I sought a party during this evening's activities, but 90% of seekers were Japanese and there were approximately 6-7 Warriors seeking at all times, so no luck on a pickup.

Hopefully I'll be able to get on in a timely fashion tonight to join a meripo with Feon, but this is all subject to the willingness of my children to go to sleep.

Next time, Guivre... Next time

2007-01-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

I started out the evening by fishing for more Ogre Eels while waiting for the potential Temple of Uggly coffer run until it became obvious that the event wasn't going to happen (a few key members were absent due to temporary work schedule changes). I got a couple more skillups and could feel the next one coming to give me level 30, but I snapped the line a couple of times on bad bite judgement (one was a rusty bucket, the other was most definitely a Bastore Breamm).

I was getting ready to dejectedly log out when Feon proposed another adventure for the evening. "Want to kill Guivre?"

Hmm, among the other things I would like to do to Guivre, killing is definitely at the top of the list, so I packed up my fishing gear and made my way to Kuftal. I met Ishmael (the currently 2-boxed manifestation of Feon) and waited for others to arrive. We had 7 members total, NIN NIN SAM WAR WHM BRD BRD... at least that's what I think the lineup was.

The initial coordination phase kinda went FUBAR when one of the NIN was screwing around with crabs and got killed by the NM. Another member who joined the group was on his way to the deceased and also caught agro, dying on the spot. Attempts to raise were very tricky, since they had died in Guivre's strolling path.

So for awhile there was lots of dying, herding cats, and curt orders.

But we eventually got it together and planned on pulling the dragon close to the zone and dealing with him there. The pull didn't work due to the Guivre's speed, so we decided to meet the dragon in the main room.

As we were finally grouping and waiting for Guivre to pass by, the NIN who had died earlier began to DC and had to reboot. So it was up to me, Feon, and the SAM to melee this thing and try to stay alive. I failed at that, and managed to miss the skillchain right before doing so (we had planned on Blade:Ten + Steel Cyclone for Darkness). I over-ambitiously pulled hate off of Feon (Voke + Warcry) when his shadows died and I could not shed it. At 300 per hit, I barely had time to take off Berserk and frantically try to get Ni to fire before I dropped dead.

The missing NIN reconnected as the shit was really hitting the fan, and the leader of the other party in the alliance was too busy keeping us alive to get him back on in time.

Yeah, we died.

Cozmos reraised and gave a round of R3's.

I wanted to kill Guivre more than ever, and some of the group wanted to stick around for another attempt... until we noticed the time. 12AM PST. Most of us had stuff to do in the morning, so we decided to call it a night.

But it felt damned good to slice into Guivre with a great axe. I do look forward to trying this again.

I'm tired of Besieged

2007-01-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

That's right.

The event lasts too long, gives too few rewards, lags out the already laggerific Aht Urgan area, and interferes with my chances to party.

A Besieged was in progress as I logged on last night so I hopped in, knowing that 650 people in Al Zahbi would reduce the EXP party pool for awhile. It ended about 20 minutes after I joined, and I got a Great Axe skillup (267) and 500 EXP out of the deal. This would have been fine, I guess, if another Besieged didn't hit immediately afterwards...

It lasted upwards of an hour, and netted me nothing but ISP due to a back to back...to back death, and a Raise that lagged out as the trolls retreated.

Waste of time. Even if I had earned the 1000 EXP, it would have been something I could have earned cumulatively on a single EXP chain in a friggin party. I'll admit it's a mildly fun diversion after doing something useful in the game for a few hours, or if you plan on a 5-6 hour session for the day. But it simply taxes too many resources, is too ambitious, and too chaotic, for people who actually want to get other stuff done in a limited time span.

OK, rant done.

At 10PM, I gave up on getting any further EXP and set out to East Saruta to fish up more Ogre Eels before passing out.

Tonight will consist of Temple of Uggly coffer run with Lifthrasir, which is likely to be quite fun.

Cactrot Rapido and the Pick of Trials

2007-01-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

As I logged in on Friday night, Feon greeted me with two questions. Do you have any plans? How do you feel about participating in something that might kill you?

I'd say that's one of the more excellent ways to launch an evening in this game ^_^

He planned on grabbing Cactrot Rapido that evening, but was at first dismayed that the NM wasn't up, which rarely happens on this server. Almost no one goes out of their way to kill this thing.

So we initially changed plans to break my Pick of Trials latent in Kuftal Tunnel, which was also fine by me. As we made our way to the tunnel, however, Feon spotted Rapido and we quickly reverted to the earlier plan. He was two-boxing Ishmael on his Bard.

He wanted to try inflicting as much damage as quickly as possible, which was going to be especially crucial since we didn't have any stunners. Feon lent me his Berserker's Axe, and brought a couple of Icarus Wings. He came on his Warrior and equipped a polearm for Impulse Drive -> Steel Cyclone -> Darkness. The plan was to launch the fight with 300 TP each, hit the L3 skillchain twice, as quickly as possible, and have the 2 mages (Cozmos and Audessa) chainspell nuke the rest of the HP away.

And we almost did it.

It took awhile to claim the thing, since he would never run through the area where we happened to be holding a cactuar captive..but he eventually did and we launched into our plan. Unfortunately 10,000 Needles just hit us too hard, and Feon barely had time to get the 2nd Impulse Drive off before we hit the dirt (along with Ishmael). The mages fended for themselves for a bit, but couldn't get the HP down quickly enough and we wiped. Cozmos re-raised and came back on her WHM to R3 us, and we evaluated the fight.

Our initial damage was nice: Impulse Drive for 843, Steel Cyclone for 1182, Darkness for 1300. Our main problem, I think, was the lack of numbers to spread out the 10k damage; and of course a stun-lock might have worked here, but we didn't have that option. All in all we did a decent job. I'd say with a couple extra bodies, we'll be able to take him down on the next attempt.

We dusted off and went down into Kuftal for a bit to work 50 points off of my latent before calling it a night.

Parade Gorget

2007-01-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

I logged in with the intention of taking another stab at Treasures and Tribulations and fishing the rest of the evening. However, as I was headed to Giddeus for the BCNM, Raikoh asked for help with his Parade Gorget NM fight in Oldton Movalpolos. I volunteered and had enough time to complete the BCNM for some decent drops: Quake and a Fencer's Ring. I was hoping for another Astral Ring, but Quake is a very decent consolation prize (90-100k on my server).

Raikoh recruited another 75 WAR, Aryus, and scoured the auction houses and bazaars for Goblin Drinks. Aryus eventually found a couple and we headed out to Gusgen -> Movalpolos.

To kill the time while waiting for them, I fruitlessly camped Stray Mary in the highlands, and came away with 12 sheepskins, and a Rogetsurin from a random NM kill (Bendigeit Vran).

Another party was camping the pop points in Movalpolos, so we stayed at G-13 for a bit, hoping for a pop there, then eventually gave up and checked the other two areas... and found the Scrawled Writing at I-9 (from the southern corner of that position). We popped the Goblin Wolfman, traded hate for an easy fight, and Raikoh got his Parade Gorget on the first try.

Aryus asked if I wanted to try for a gorget as well, since he'd brought two drinks, and I accepted. We built up TP to pass the time while remaining at I-9 to check for a repop. Fifteen minutes later, the Scrawled Writing appeared at the same location, and we both piled on Aggressor, Berserk, Mighty Strikes, and alternated Warcry to plow into the poor NM with 300-TP Rampages at the outset of the fight. Another fast battle, and another Parade Gorget dropped.

Considering the odds I've heard on the drop, I'm stunned.

Another fun way to spend an evening! Certainly more fun than last night's activities -_-; I'll take up Feon's advice and make the second attempt at Ilrussi Atoll on either NIN or a level 1 character, since I really don't want to eat that much EXP loss again.

Ilrussi Atoll. So close. Yet so far away.

2007-01-24T23:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't been on much due to RL scheduling issues, but I signed on tonight with the intention of solo'ing the Ilrussi Atoll staging point. I managed to find the Lamia Fang key, which was fairly easy. I navigated to the Arrapago Reef zone nearby at I-6 and found my way across the first reef map without incident.

But I caught Heraldic Imp agro on the second map, in the room where 2-3 of them are fluttering about in the first cave you enter there. Too bad. I thought I was sufficiently sneaky, only to see a nice little Firaga message pop up in my log.

At least I have the path clearly marked, and can easily solo the key again next week. Sort of a fun run; the adrenaline always flows for me when I'm trying to stealth my way to a goal in this game. Haven't felt that charged since my crazy LB3 run.

Guess I'll EXP and craft to pass the time this week...

Not having 6/6 on these Runic Portals is really bugging me though. Must. Get them. Once I get Ilrussi, I'll only be missing the Nyzul Isle staging point, which is a cakewalk.

Pinata-na

2007-01-20T13:38:00.000-08:00

I've mostly recovered from Viva Pinata, and have started logging into FFXI with a little more regularity over the past few nights.

I neglected to report on 1/13 that I had participated in a successful run for Minusjoker's DRG AF helm fight in the Temple of Uggalipeh. Yes, yet another Paragon fight!

It went fairly smoothly, with the exception of the moment we walked into the NM room and Minus proceeded to aggro every friggin Tonberry behind the door. That ramboesque "entry method" actually turned out for the best, since we needed to clear the pops before the fight anyway... It just caught a few of us off-guard. Lycas joked that MJ's line could have been something like: " [slam] All right, fuckers! Where's my AF!"

Before the trip to the Temple of Ugly, Murrdoc and I were hanging out with Lexxi and competing over who was the prettiest bishonen Lexxi-lackey. Yes, I do have an embarassing pic:

On the 17th and the 19th, I successfully claimed the Dune Widow... for a grand total of 0/4. Yeah, I think I'm finished with her. There are infinitely better ways to be spending my time, though, to be honest, it was a fun camp.

For the first time last night, I was able to join Lifthrasir in an EXPish party! Murrdoc needed to learn Frenetic Rip, which an imp will purportedly only inflict when someone hits it with a critical attack as it attempts to use its horn. So we formed a party: Lycasdemus (PLD), Atrenore (DRG), Minusjoker (BLM), Zorrandor (RDM), Murrdoc (BLU), and yours truly.

Caedarva was overcrowded, but we chained imps regardless and had an absolute blast. We hit a nice stopping point around midnight when the zone started to clear out, and our camp gradually became a deathtrap as increasingly more imps spawned unclaimed and started to agro-link on the pulls.

We eventually got ourselves into the dreaded scenario: "omg, 3 Imps and we're all silenced and amnesia'd, lmao." Yes, we wiped... hard. And it was funny as hell.

Minusjoker survived because he'd literally fallen asleep. He managed to wake up a couple of minutes after the incident, and raised Atre, Doc, and myself, only to aggro another unfortunate pop, at which point my laughter caused me to lose control of the keyboard.

Doc had warped as soon as he got back up, but Atre and I hung out for some reason. I was mostly inactive because I was laughing too hard to do anything. But I eventually equipped my cudgel and waited to see if he could get Sleepga 2 to stick. When he finally hit the double-digits, I warped my ass out... watching Atrenore drop a second before I dissappeared ; ;

Fun times! And I mean that without a hint of sarcasm. Oh wait, that sounded like sarcasm about being sarcastic. But it wasn't. Honest! It was the most fun I've had in awhile.

{I'm sorry}

2007-01-15T19:36:00.000-08:00

Hey, some of you raise overgrown chickens.

I raise... live pinatas, m'kay?

I'll be back in a bit.

32,759

2007-01-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

Limit points, that is. In a bit over 3.5 hours. Setup: BRD, WHM, WAR, WAR, MNK, NIN

People must have been off doing Salvage or Assault runs, because Caedarva and the Mamool Ja Staging Point were almost entirely deserted, although the thickets took a bit longer to empty out. So we played in both, starting in the mire and moving on to the thickets when people were getting exasperated with Amnesia.

The pulling was a bit chaotic at times, but we managed to hit a chain #20 in the thickets before a Sleepga from a Philosopher stopped us in our tracks.

Due to the endless queue of BRD pulls, I was making heavy use of my /ja "Provoke" <stnpc> to grab hate from soon-to-be-slept mobs without interrupting my own hits on the current mob, and to enable the BRD to run back out into the field without worry of being followed (or losing too much HP while getting Sleep to stick).

That's when I learned that the nifty /ignorepet has it's drawbacks in certain situations, namely with Mamool Ja pets (Wyvern or Raptor) which are usually first in line in the kill queue before the pet's owner.

On the subject of targeting, why does the 'tab sequence' sometimes choose to target a mob behind you, 20 feet away, rather than a mob right in front of you? -_-

All in all, though, it obviously went well. I constantly had that feeling that the party was teetering on the edge of control, but it was a pleasant element of danger. The lack of players was unfamiliar and amplified the pulling to occasional breaking points. The Bard did die a few times; twice in the mire due to awkward pops and Amnesia timing, and once in the thickets because of a linked Skoffin, Pikeman, Seapuk combo. Sometimes, there just aren't enough Vokes to go around...

In Lifthrasir news, the LS was successful in completing Lexxi's Choral Justaucorps quest last night. I was sorry to miss it, but had already been inducted into the aforementioned merit party for about 30 minutes before the rest of the shell signed on. Congratulations, Lexxi, Paragon of Bard Excellence! And a belated congratulations to Maloc, who recently attained Paragon status on his Dragoon. Movin' on up!

All over the place

2007-01-10T10:48:00.001-08:00

Dune Widow

I spent a couple of evenings in Eastern Altepa Desert as WAR/THF, farming webs for a change and camping the Dune Widow on the off chance that I could get a claim & drop. The Spider Torque currently goes for around 300k on my server, and the camp didn't seem all that painful since I could always run over to the oasis and steal Mythril Beastcoins during the down time. I did eventually get a claim, but the NM only dropped webs (3 of them). Better luck next time.

While I was camping, Atrenore mentioned that she was working on the Sahagin Key quest in preparation for her Impulse Drive WSNM fight. Apparently a few members of the LS had made a prior attempt the night before which had ended badly, and Atrenore wasn't really expecting another attempt that night. When more people started logging in, we threw the idea around some more and decided to give it another go.

An Undying Pledge

While we were sightseeing in Sea Serpent Grotto & waiting for Atre to get her key, we stumbled across the ??? that spawns Glyryvilu, a Sea Monk NM that must be killed to complete the Norg quest. It was a pretty painless battle and we hiked back to Norg to claim our Light Buckler. I'll never use it, so I'll probably just take the measly 3k and run.

Impulse Drive

We all made our way past the Ornamented Door and found the ??? near the entrance to the first room beyond the bridge. We had to pre-emptively clear a few Sahagin and Mindgazers, and decided we would pull the NM into the tunnel to avoid pops.

The Water Leaper Pugil NM had quite a few HP, but with solid tanking, DD, and nuking, we took it down without incident, despite a last-minute Mindgazer link (those things like to roam apparently). One of our cleanest NM fights.

Rank 7

I expected to go meriting on the following night, but instead received an invitation to complete Sandy mission 6-1, Leaute's Last Wishes. We trio'd the fight as WAR, WHM, RDM, and I won't lie... It was a close fight, especially when Sabotender Enamorado's 1000 Needles went into overdrive at the end of the battle. But we pulled through, and made our way back to Sandy for cutscenes.

Since we were on a roll and the night was young, we decided to go for 6-2, Ranperre's Final Rest. Helping Lifthrasir with this fight had been my first event with them and we had killed all 3 mobs without too much fuss, so I wasn't too worried about this run.

We sneak pulled and killed the Warrior NM first, then grabbed a second NM, and the third de-spawned while we were fighting. Voila!

The most annoying thing about this mission was all the running back & forth from Sandy to KRT to Sandy, and back to KRT on the next day (JP time) for another cutscene... aaaand back to Sandy to actually get the Rank. -_-

Merits

On the following night, I joined up with a merit party in good old Caedarva Mire. The zone only had a population of about 40 players (icecicles must have started forming somewhere in Ifrit's Cauldron), so keeping a steady stream of pulls was pretty easy. My only challenge lied in keeping the hate off of a MNK named Killmer, an old friend of mine. It was an entirely self-imposed challenge, since we were really supposed to be joint-tanking, but... I'm a WAR. You know how that goes.

At the end of the party, Killmer extemporized a bit about the strengths of the MNK job, making me want to level that as my next DD job when the time comes. But I want to merit the hell out of WAR first, and at least get my WHM up to 37 before thinking about leveling another melee DD job.

I spent a merit on upgrading my Axe skill. The full upgrade path will add 16 to my skill cap, bringing Axe up into the A+ skill rank. I'm not sure what the equation is for determining the Attack boost, but Accuracy would be increased by 14 with this setup (assuming they round down from 14.72). I like those numbers.

Fun

2007-01-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past few nights basically having fun in FFXI, which is as it should be I suppose.

I fished up Ogre Eels on the first night, turning down a kind invite for more skillups with Feon since I wanted to take it easy and log out for an early rest. I needed the eels to skillup to 62 in Alchemy, and because the fish vendor can be kinda spotty with supply and targeting the eels would also allow me to skillup, I decided to fish them up.

My spot was on the seashore of East Sarutabaruta using a Sinking Minnow. The Finalfishing database listed Peeled Lobster as the best bait for these, so I cast a line hoping for Gold Lobster, which as it turns out bites about as frequently as Gold Carp and is still a bit tricky to reel in at my level. Thankfully, Ogre Eels went for the Sinking Minnow also. There was no advantage to using Peeled Lobster, since it targets the same fish, but I burned some wind crystals on the lobsters and fed them to the eels anyway. Why not? After reeling in a couple of Bastore Bream with entirely too much effort, I started releasing those. I skilled up to 29 in fishing and logged out soon thereafter.

On the following night, I checked in with Feon and he was once again skilling up in Kuftal, so I joined him and his group of friends and chopped away at Ovinniks and Greater Cockatrices for a few hours. It was, as usual, a pleasure to hang out, and the skillups were actually faster that night due to the full moon phase.

At first I suspected the skillups were more likely when I didn't use accuracy food, but soon decided the moon was the most likely cause. Something about skillups in this game lends itself to voodoo theories doesn't it? I still only ate one Sushi, since my accuracy at skill level 262 as sufficient to land most hits. I went from 261 to 266 in that party before sleepiness took over. 10 levels away from having both of my primary weapons capped!

My next weapon-related goal will be to unlock Decimation, even though I'll probably never use it.

Last night's session began with browsing the AH and trying not to buy things, and planning, planning, planning. I did buy a couple of baubles. A Ruby Ring, to fully proc in that 1 fSTR during WS (woo...hoo? -_-). And a Warwolf Belt, for the extra +5 STR on WS if I can afford the hit in accuracy. A better long term solution in that slot will be the Potent Belt, since it offers the best of both worlds: a +3 STR bonus, and +8 accuracy (only a loss of 2 points over the Life Belt).

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with the STR build, honestly. When you break down the math, you're still just "nickle & diming" a few damage points in the end, for mucho gil I might add. Multi-hit weaponskill damage is another one of those things in FFXI that frustrates me in terms of it's voodoo performance.

The other stuff that I didn't buy is still sitting on my Shopping List, waiting for another day. I'm mostly holding off because I want to make sure I have enough gil to keep skilling Alchemy comfortably, but also because some of those pieces only work in pairs, balancing out each other's weaknesses particularly in the Accuracy department. And most of them are in the 400k range, so buying more than one item would break my bank.

/em hums "If I were a rich man..."

The last part of the night was quite fun, since it consisted of another Lifthrasirian escapade. This time, we were going for an AF NM fight in Castle Oztroja for Quan, an up-and-coming Monk in our group. Feon very kindly lent me his Dusk Gloves to try out the combined 8% haste with my turban for the fight, since accuracy wouldn't be much of an issue.

The shell gathered together in front of the zone around midnight, and I noticed Maloc was now sporting several pieces of the Dragoon AF set.

So...so...envious of the aesthetics of that set! I'm sure you all have seen how goofy an Elvaan looks in the Warrior AF.

We got to the ??? spawn point without too much trouble. No one dropped invisibility at inopportune times and we didn't veer off course, though we had to stop and consult the map at one point on the third floor to make sure we were taking the right route. The mages rested to full and we moved in for the kill as Quan traded his Yagudo Drink.

I didn't anticipate how badly this thing would kill my shadows...and my HP, which I should have, considering the NM is a frickin' Monk (duh). Counter kicked my ass, and he countered constantly. And I made the faux pas of landing a 1200ish Rampage a little too early in the fight, and dealing with the hate issues thereafter.

At one point I hit the 'zomg I'm gonna die' macro to put up Defender and all of my AF/DEF pieces. Our Paladin, Lycasdemus, kept Huu Xalmo on a pretty damned good leash, however, and I survived to put on my damage gear again. But I tread on glass after that, particularly with the haste effect. We defeated him in a few minutes, and Quan claimed his Xalmo Feather for the final piece of his AF set.

I realized after the fight was over that Defender was still up. ORZ Why can't I keep a cool analytical head in these fights? Maybe I just need to do more of them.

Anyhow, congratulations to Quan, and a big thank you to the Lifthrasir group, and Feon et. al. for making my days in this fantasy world... quite fantastic. ^_^

Premature return

2007-01-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

It looks like my proclamation of being "back" was premature, as I was apparently announcing this during the calm before the storm. The moving in stage by far superceded the moving out stage in terms of chaos, which combined with holiday relative madness, and some Fresno variant of the holiday flu to create a perfect storm.

My only means of articulating this to the linkshell, as I hastily logged in and out to sell poison potion before passing out from the Nyquil, was:

Sorry I haven't been on much, folks. Life has really been kicking my ass.

Of course they all understood, but I still felt badly about missing out on some of their coffer hunts and AF fights. I spent what meager time I had with the poison potion routine, since prices had climbed to 20k per stack over the holidays. This made for an easy though slow rise from 300k to 800k. I'll consider this gil to be padding for my upcoming Alchemy skillup sessions, and will try not to spend it. [Stares at that Assault Earring on the AH; looks away].

I had a very welcoming return to the game last night. It was uncanny how much I felt restored to my old and true 'self' by just interacting with my old friends. I still felt under the weather, but the feeling of contentment and belonging outweighed the physical discomfort.

My good friend Feon proposed a Great Axe skillup session for me, which turned out to be the perfect way to ease back into the game. I had the fortune of meeting his significant other and several of his good friends. They were a warm group of people, and quite funny in their own idiosyncratic way. It really is a pleasure to stumble into these small groups of close friends in FFXI.

We warped out to Altep, and Feon entertained the idea of taking on Cactrot Rapido who was spewing dust all over us as we made our way to Kuftal, but Audessa elected to defer that challenge to another day. We made our way to an Ovinnik camp, those nasty tiger mobs in the tunnels, one of whom killed me long ago as I was running, lost & mapless, and without invisibility -_-.

Aside from the occasional pop at camp, we didn't have any close brushes with death, and my Great Axe slowly skilled up to 261 (and change). I still have quite a ways to go until I hit the 276 cap, but this was definitely a fun way to spend the evening. I forgot to mention to Feon that this party also refreshed my lost EXP from a death in a prior party earlier in the month, and earned me a few Limit Points in the process.

So...I think I'm actually back this time. Although I will be taking it easy and won't be grinding though 2AM parties as much as I used to, mostly due to health issues that I won't go detail about. It certainly does feel good to be back, though.

Called to Task

2006-12-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

In no mood to craft or farm, I put up my flag for more meriting last night. I got a replacement invitation fairly quickly to a party in Bhaflau Thickets. They were camped in the back, by the zone to the Jade Sepulcher, which is actually a fairly risky camp since mobs repop pretty quickly, making linkless pulls trickier if not impossible at times. The Mamool Ja Philosophers (BLM) can be particularly nasty when linked to an incoming pull since they enjoy spamming -ga spells and sleeping folks.

We got one of those on the first pull, and a nuke hit the entire party pretty hard. I pulled hate instantly and died before I could get my shadows back up. Yeah, death on the first mob. I could only chuckle, as I cautiously melee'd in weakened status for awhile.

But the party went well: RDM WHM WAR RNG NIN DRG. This wasn't really a standard "bounce the hate around" sort of merit party, so I was conservative with the Provokes, trying to let the hate land on the Ninja as much as possible and Voke/Warcrying the mob off of her when shadows were exhausted and a Firespit or Rushing Drub would hit particularly hard. The mages had to leave around an hour later, so we disbanded with me around 3k until the next merit.

I got a "{Party}{Long time}" invitation at 11PM as I was walking from the Runic Portal to my MH to log for the night. It was from a Japanese player whom I recognized from the Ziz party I blogged earlier this year. It was late, but I took it anyway... and once again the EXP camp proved to be unconventional but interesting.

We headed out to the Halvung staging point in Mount Zhayolm and people used their Cast Metal Plate to open the gate at J-7. I didn't have one but followed one of the other members through the door to make my way to the camp at I-9. This was Hilltroll country, and we camped up the steps in a location where trolls spawned on both sides of us, leading to an impressively endless 'sleep queue' of trolls. Party makeup was RDM WHM BRD NIN DRG WAR.

The killing went underway, and I made the initial mistake of eating meat when my sushi wore off, which didn't work so well on the Hilltroll Paladins and Hilltroll Dark Knights.

Live & learn.

This combined with an undispellable Diamondhide (I wish I had known this since the poor RDM opened every fight with Dispel), which made it impossible to gain TP very quickly, and the Paladins loved to Cure IV themselves. Thankfully the other trolls weren't as problematic.

I did my usual thing, spamming damage as much as possible while keeping the shadows up and trying not to interfere with what I assumed was the main tank. I assumed incorrectly, and the BRD eventually exploded:

{Warrior} {Provoke} {Do you have it?}.
...
{Warrior} {Too weak}?
...
Bard pokes Frohike.
[/say channel]: "you"
(I assume he was trying to clarify that he wasn't talking about the Hilltroll Warriors -_-;).

Let me tell you. If you ever need to galvanize a lazy or clueless Warrior into a crazed flurry of Provokes, Warcries, Rampage and rampant hate-stealing, you only need to use those two simple little auto-translates.

{Warrior} {Too weak}.

I'll admit I should have previously analyzed the party makeup and mob effects with a little more...engagement and turned off the auto-pilot for this one. I was angry at first, that the BRD should state this so rudely. But in a sense I was also relieved. At least the party didn't go for hours thinking what the BRD said but keeping it to themselves.

I was the only other Utsusemi user in the party, and the DRG wasn't going to bounce hate. Of course it was my job to trade hate with the NIN, and I should have known this. After bouncing the enmity around between me and the Ninja for a few mobs, I confirmed that this was what they wanted. {Provoke} OK? And the response was {Yes, please}.

And we kept going from there. When my damned Sis Kebabi finally wore off (sometimes that Sanction can be a double-edged sword), I switched to Sole Sushi and swapped in the Swordbelt+1 rather than the Life Belt, and we plowed through the mobs without too much trouble (excepting Diamondhide).

The party continued with no pauses until we disbanded around 2AM, with me close to earning my 3rd merit for the night. I closed with "{I'm sorry} {Provoke} {Slow}", which elicited a "np ty^^" from the Ninja before I logged out.

That darned language barrier can be tough at times, but the Bard got through to me loud and clear last night: Pull your weight, muthaf***a!

Live & learn.

I spent 2 merits this morning, trimming 10 seconds off of my Aggressor and Berserk recast timers. I want to upgrade these evenly to keep their timers in sync, while continuing to upgrade Crit Attack rate until capped. I'll keep upgrading Bergressor until I hit 3 upgrades each, then decide whether to begin working on Double Attack upgrades or go for the full 5 Aggressor 5 Berserk route.

Besieged by the holidays

2006-12-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

Same tune this week. I had very little time to log on and get much of anything accomplished. I merited again a few nights ago out in the thickets in a 4xWAR, RDM, WHM party that went pretty smoothly for everyone but a poor Taru Warrior who kept pulling hate. He died twice. Once because the rest of us sucked and couldn't pull the mob off of him, and the second time because we were all asleep. But other than that, it was a nice quick & dirty party, no drama.

I logged in last night to a level 6 Mamool Ja Besieged in the Advancing stage, so I hung out in Al Zhabi with an LS-mate Minusjoker and got .5 in skillups on my Great Axe. I neglected to take a screenshot of the frog mobs, which I didn't notice until one of them charmed me. Another cast Burst on Minusjoker for 900+ damage. Fun stuff. I visited Gulool Ja Ja, and got tired of hitting him for 8 damage, so moved on to the other NM (can't remember it's name) and eventually killed it with the group. The Mamool Ja retreated after that. Another 1000 EXP down the toilet -_-... can't wait for that update.

After the Besieged, I finally spent my Imperial Standing Points on 20 Gold Imperial Coins and did the Nashmau exchange for the 1000 bronze coins, which I traded to an NPC for my turban:

Aside from the boat ride, it went pretty quickly thanks to /item macros. I don't see myself really using this piece except during an Utsusemi macro, at least until I start working on a pricey Haste build. I hear those are quite nice, once everything is in place.

The new GM policy is a reality

2006-12-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

I noticed a name in red today as I was checking the AH before dinner. He had an 'SGM' logo and it dawned on me that someone was in fact getting their Bomb Core back, in confirmation of the recent annoucement concerning mistakenly thrown/dropped items. Oddly, they carried out the transaction in the /say channel, and everyone quickly clustered around the event.

I checked his gear and it was all preceded by "Judge", Judge Sword, Judge Helm, etc. All of it was Level 1, GM-Only. And the stats were mostly buffed out basic stats, for the most part in the DEF category (e.g. DEF 70 on the body piece). The great sword was similar to non-abjurated relic gear, with 99 damage and 999 delay.

His avatar emitted heat waves that warped the air around him, making the appearance all the more impressive and strange. After he warped out, someone said the 'SGM' stood for 'Senior GM.'

So... there you have it. Apparently we only get one chance to get something like a thrown Bomb Core returned to us though. Use the favor once, and it's gone for good.

I guess that's nice and all but doesn't it seem a bit like they're looking a little too hard for work for the GMs? Wouldn't it be more efficient to implement some sort of equipment 'lock' option on certain slots? Or even a basic 'Disable Ranged Attacks' option would do it, really. It seems oddly un-Japanese to take such a non-preventative approach.

Things that make you go Hmmm.

I'm back

2006-12-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

And what better thing to do when high on paint fumes and dizzy from exhaustion than log into FFXI... at 11PM?

My first discovery when returning was that someone took a big dump on the Poison Potion market. 60 potions on the AH. 60... Honestly, what nimrod out there saw 50+ potions on the AH and decided that the market really needed a few more? Time to work on that INT, people.

Anyhow, in light of this I changed my plans when heading out the Bibiki and hopped on the Manaclipper to farm Uragnite Shells in Purgo Isle. The drop rate with TH1 wasn't too shabby, and the mobs were actually kinda fun to kill once I figured them out.

If they retract into their shell, they have a DEF+ and Regen effect which balances fairly evenly with the damage I inflict (with Axe or Great Axe). Weapon skills at this point are a waste. When the Uragnite emerges from the shell however, it is extremely vulnerable. Average hits with the Gawaine Axe were around 200, increasing to 300 on crits. Opening with a Sneak Attack while the snail was exposed was usually a good way to start things off. And needless to say, Raging Rush would hit for around 800 for a nearly instant kill. For extra fun, since the mob is immobile when retracted, I could run around behind it and Sneak Attack for a little more damage (pretty useless because of the Regen, but fun nonetheless). Their Venom Shield move usually missed, but when it stuck (for a 16HP hit per tick) some Antidotes were always on-hand thanks to the vendor NPC nearby.

Fun, relaxing, and perhaps dull to some of you but... I came away with about 6-7 shells, which currently go for around 17k. I could think of worse ways to earn 100k. Compare that to the 6 stacks of poison potion I would have needed to sell at the current market rate, and I think my time was spent more efficiently ^_^

Meriting. Crafting. Moving...

2006-12-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

I've joined up with a couple more merit parties and polished off a few nights with Besieged here and there. Although, since my EXP is capped, I probably won't be participating in Besieged any further until the update comes through that enables users to earn Limit Points in the event.

I've placed my first three merits into upgrading Critical Attack Rate a couple of times and plan on capping that before moving on to other categories.

Due to the big move planned for the end of this week, I haven't had much time to do anything other than jump on to craft the GP item of the day and trade it in. We'll be moving in earnest this weekend, and unpacking for awhile after that, so updates will continue to be sporadic as RL becomes more demanding of my time.

When I return, I want to continue building up some gil to fund gear for a couple of melee subjobs that I still need to cap at 37: MNK and THF. I'll probably start with MNK, although I might drop it again when the cost gets too prohibitive and pick up THF for some fun.

I also want to start working on getting my relic armor, so I've applied to Final Heaven, a sponsored Dynamis shell, and want to apply to whichever one the Lifthrasirians have been joining up with (Knights of the Round?).

I'm looking forward to another Savage Blade run which will hopefully happen this weekend or later, since I'd hate to miss Lycasdemus getting this WS on his Paladin (and getting sweet revenge for his prior death to this scorpion).

Blacklist Episode 3: The Return of the Diva

2006-11-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

After a couple of uneventful nights of crafting tidbits for profit and/or guild points, I went meriting in the mire last night. For the first time, I was able to effectively use Sis Kebabi, thanks to the Optical Hat. I went in with as much accuracy gear as possible, basically everything in the left-hand column of my equipment wiki, with the addition of the Life Belt rather than the Swordbelt +1. The meat took care of the attack bonus.

Meat! Not sushi! I felt like a Warrior again.

There were a few whiffs during the Aggressor cooldown, but nothing major, and my damage output was much nicer than what I'm accustomed to. I was literally laughing at some of the Rampage damage on the Imps and the occasional Jnun. I soon capped my EXP and phased into earning Limit Points.

Unfortunately, the RDM in the group (the sole healer for awhile) had R0-itis. You know, that annoying phenomenon where your connection alternates from second to second between normal rates, then 0, then normal rates, then 0 again, and so forth. It lead to a few deaths, but everyone kept a cool head about it.

About 1 hour into the session, we picked up a WHM who happened to be the person I had blacklisted last month (as a SMN) for repeatedly dropping out of my parties with rude one-liners and no warning. Before he arrived, I warned the group about the potential diva behavior and left it at that, forgetting I had actually blacklisted him.

The diva was apparently on his best behavior though, and uncharacteristically quiet [insert sitcom laughter here]. Sometime later, the leader went AFK during one of our bio breaks and never returned, and everyone dropped the party to re-form. I was baffled at first, since everyone did it without any communication. Just...poof... no one in the party but me and the AFK leader. My friend Lurick told me what was going on, and that the WHM had sent me an invite. And that's when it clicked; before I could alter the blacklist, though, Lurick got leadership and invited me.

I removed the WHM from the list anyhow, but I still had my doubts. The party was going well, so there wasn't much of a litmus test for the 'diva factor' still potentially lurking in his persona. Until a couple of minutes later, when three of us announced that we would need to be going in 30 minutes, due to the late hour, and that the party would need to disband at that point.

The party had been going for quite awhile with the WHM, so it wasn't as if we had pulled a "replace & disband" on him, but he barked at us to find replacements and to give him warning before we left.

Lurick barked back, and said 3 in the party were leaving and the disbanding would commence in 30 minutes.

To drive the point home, after every couple of mobs, Lurick would announce an exact t-minus count: "22 minutes, 37 seconds until {Disbanding party.}" From people's behavior, I took it the WHM had actually not been rubbing people the right way, but he'd been sticking around this time since we were obviously raking in the kills. Heaven forbid our EXP had slowed below a 5k rate or he probably would have disbanded again.

We disbanded early anyhow, when a bad pull killed Lurick for the second time that evening.

I left the WHM off of my blacklist, since his name is cemented in my memory now... Besides, being a caustic diva who can't be trusted in certain situations doesn't completely warrant being blacklisted. Just avoided, when possible.

I'm now roughly 8900 into my first merit point.

Limit Break Radio

2006-11-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd mention that I found an excellent podcast awhile ago, called Limit Break Radio. It is very well produced and organized and is, in my opinion the best FFXI podcast out there.

This week's episode was dedicated to BST, and was quite interesting for me since I'm planning on leveling that job once I get my WHM sub to 37.

Check them out if you have the time.

Keeping busy

2006-11-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

So, as stated in my prior post, I did quite a bit of crafting and got into the more comfortable 700k range. Poison potions are still a decent profit, so I've been riding those as far as I can. I've also been working on collecting my Guild Points for the Alchemist apron, which I plan to acquire once I break into Craftsman status.

I was able to jump into a few merit parties and have been getting more comfortable with Mamook, since that's where the majority of them have taken place. The mire is often too crowded to accomodate a merit party, and the Mamool Ja staging point in the thickets has also been highly populated this weekend.

It's not ideal, but the EXP is acceptable if the party knows what it's doing. I still hate Sickle Slash though. Hate it.

Even Mamook was crowded on Saturday night, forcing our party to roam and basically kill anything in the halls, since all open-area sites were being ravaged by 1 or 2 parties minimum. But I'm gradually getting to the EXP cap, and looking forward to meriting. 36,699 / 44,000

Somewhere in all this mess, I've begun soloing the Cermet Headstones for ZM5.

And for some fun last night, I joined up with Lifthrasir to get Quan his LB2. Seeing those big damage numbers on the Hound/Coeurl/Tiger was entertainment in itself, and the mini-event was a great way to get the gang together.

As we ran across Xarcabard, killing pretty much anything in our path, I noticed how much more powerful our group has grown over the past few months... When more people start getting into their 70's we could become quite a force to be reckoned with.

Crafting Stasis

2006-11-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

Updates for the next few days will probably be non-existant as I go on a crafting spree to increase my gil pool. Once I do this, I'm seriously considering leveling Alchemy a bit further, possibly into the mid-70's, with a smattering of merit parties to break up the monotony now & then.

I haven't checked into Dynamis shells yet, but I can't even really think about that until I get myself out of abject poverty.

In the meantime, I leave you with this funny video.

Hardcore Gamer Magazine: Caveat Emptor

2006-11-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

The past couple of issues of this magazine sported a full-page advertisement for IGE on the back cover.

I've never seen such a huge IGE ad before, and I was quite disgusted when I found it.

I mean the magazine isn't that great to begin with, but I supported it because of its affiliation with DoubleJump books, who are responsible for making some really fine strategy guides for games such as Disgaea 1 & 2, and SMT: Nocturne.

When the second issue came with this ad, I jumped over to their forums and basically told them to stop, since this was clearly insulting to their intended audience, and that the MMORPGers that work there should know better. I was a bit harsh in my choice of words, but I was justifiably angry. Of course I got flamed to hell and back by the forum fans, and the senior editor DJPubba, claims ignorance.

To his credit, though, he is 'researching' the matter although they are stuck in a contract for the next 10 issues.

I must confess I flamed a person on that thread, and in hindsight this was completely unnecessary and unfair, so I came back and apologized. Sometimes I do let my emotions get the best of me.

To any of you who subscribe to this mag; if you care about what your gaming news sources are endorsing, I would encourage you to email:

mail@hardcoregamer.com
burr@hardcoregamer.com

Or set up an account on their forum and let your voice be known (use the existing thread).

Other magazines have turned IGE down and been very public about it.

HGM seemed to be doing fine before the IGE ads, so although it may be hard for them to wipe the $_$ out of their eyes and go with another customer, they really need to do it, or concede defeat to greed.

On script. Off script. Ding 75!

2006-11-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

Off script: I had to euthanize one of my cats yesterday. Her name was Soda and she was 9 years old; she began losing massive amounts of weight recently and we eventually discovered that she had suffered a renal failure and was diabetic. After several weeks of subcutaneous fluid injections, she was still in a downward spiral, and clearly suffering. So, being the 'Dad', I was tasked with bringing poor Soda on her fateful drive to the vet.

Out of respect, I requested to be there during the procedure. I whispered to her and caressed her cheek as her life peacefully left her body in a matter of a few heartbeats. I was a mess afterwards and could barely make the drive home.

On script: Several people in the group that did the O-hat run agreed to go for a ZM4 run last night, starting at 9PM PDT. I logged on at the appointed time and waited about a half-hour for the group to form and warp to Yhoat. All went smoothly until we entered the Temple of Uggalepih.

Off script: I'm of the opinion that missions in this game are truly scripted events. You go from point A to B in a coordinated fashion, communicating along the way to stay on script and reach the curtain call. Ad libbing leads to disaster, and there was a lot of ad libbing on this mission. Since I didn't have a pearl, I suspect much of this was happening in the /linkshell channel unbeknownst to me.

On script: The party wandered all over the first map, for reasons I couldn't quite guess, since we needed 1 lantern for our group and should have been targetting Maledictors on an entirely different map. They were randomly killing bees and looking for Tonberry Rattles. Again, not sure why. Were we killing time and waiting for someone? 1 member of the group (the one who also needed ZM4) and myself followed the group on its silent meandering path until it, by chance as it turns out, encountered the zone line at K-3. He and I both zoned into the jungle, and rezoned into the Decimation WSNM map to look for Maledictors, assuming the rest of the group was on its way.

Apparently they were busy killing random Cutters and popping some NM for a katana (?). So I eventually died, and my partner in crime narrowly escaped to the zoneline.

Ironically, we were treated as the ad-libbers, and I apologized without really knowing why.

Off script: I'd obviously had a long day. I was tired, and no longer certain of my best judgement. In such situations, I assume the blame when SNAFUs like this occur, try to learn from the mistakes, and trudge forward. I must, however, confess that I was angry. The anger was awkward and conflicted... these were the same people who helped me with the O-hat the night before. I couldn't possibly harbor resentment. What did settle into me though, was nagging doubt.

On script: Once raised and re-grouped, we decided to head to Den of Rancor to get the lantern drop. Almost as soon as we hit the zone line, the group had split in 3. One group to the east of the first room at H-6, and another splitting off to the west (there were only 2 of them...what they could accomplish as a duo was beyond me). The third consisted of one guy who wandered away from the first group, on his own, toward the 'A' entrance to the next floor. He died to bat aggro almost immediately, group 2 kept doing...whatever, and group 1 basically idled while the leader looked for Imprecators.

We eventually got the Unlit Lantern to drop, immediately after the leader announced that someone had already opened the gate to the Sacrificial Chamber (I thought he was looking for Imprecators, but must have decided to check the gate during the down time between pops, again unbeknownst to practically anyone else).

We entered the BC and narrowly completed the fight after a nasty Astral Flow at the tail end of the battle.

It was a wonderful CS, and I took my time reading it ^_^. I can't wait to see how the storyline unfolds.

Three of us stayed together after the mission and decided to merit/exp. Since I was 4k TNL, I couldn't pass this up, even though it was getting late. The leader formed a party and we headed out to the Mamool Ja staging point, which was only hosting a couple of other parties. Since I hadn't tried my hat yet, I went for a meat build to test things out. Ahem... Apparently this will really work better in Caedarva. The evasion on the Mamool Ja was still just a bit too high for a sushi-less diet. My performance improved once I switched back to the Sushi build.

I eventually hit the big 75 in this party, and kept going until I was roughly 6.5k into the level before the party disbanded.

Off script: After playing this game for approximately 2 and a half years, I'm elated to have finally hit this milestone. Exhausted, but elated ^_^. It's just too bad that it had to happen with such a cloud hanging over me, but that's the way of life I suppose.

I'm sure Soda was cheering me on in the way she usually did. Quietly walking across the keyboard.