Hats

I'll be brief, and write a more elaborate post when I have the time tomorrow.


And Zorrandor got his too:


I got to meet up with some old friends as well: Gimppy, Rocco, Citroen, Lurick (we were all in a 5-person shell way back when we first started), and Phear (from CC).

It was a 9-hat run, and I had the last lot. Only one person left between start and finish, and we averaged 5-minute kills on Hakutaku. Needless to say PhoenixDown obviously knew what it was doing.

A hefty thanks to the entire team that stayed, and a special thank you to Asheress for dragging me into this ^_^. Much appreciated. It's random acts of senseless kindness like this that define the game for me.

Ok, now for some sleep.

Al...most...there

I got into a party for 10k worth of EXP on Tuesday night. Nothing really notable there although I had the sinking feeling that a couple of the members were RMT... but couldn't totally prove the suspicion since they didn't completely fit the profile. Then they both suddenly DC'd simultaneously along with another party member they had 'miraculously' found (how does one find a WHM out of nowhere?), leaving me, the other WAR, and a RDM to kill a Jnun on our own before disbanding and blacklisting all 3 of them.

On Wednesday, I had a little... health incident that prevented me from logging on at all.

I apparently have a condition known as supraventricular tachyarrhythmia, where the upper section of the heart experiences a 'glitch' in the electro-chemical nodes that fire there and gets stuck in a feedback loop. This generates an extremely high heart rate and dizziness, and strange circulatory sensations; I honestly thought I was going to keel over and die in my cube when it was happening. Not fun. Apparently the condition is serious but not life-threatening, though they do recommend I go to the ER if I have another attack and can't get it back under control (there are excercises you can do to stop it).

I just need to take it easy and cut back on a few things... oh and sleep more.

Anyway, I logged in again last night for what I thought would be the party that would take me to 75. The WHM and PLD who formed it bailed with me at 4k TNL because they had to help an LS member with their LB3. It wasn't a fake reason either, because the PLD kept mt'ing questions about 'passwords' and 'torches' and I immediately knew what he was mt'ing about ^_^.

Asheress sent me heads up that the O-hat run will be happening tonight, and I'm fairly certain I can secure a cluster before the run. So it looks like I probably won't be reaching 75 until tomorrow night at the earliest.

But at least I'll reach it in style, right?

I'm a big fat liar

Did I say I would sleep tonight?

For whatever reason, come 10PM, I wasn't sleepy. Perhaps my brain is adjusting my circadian rhythms to accomodate the constant activity between 10PM - 1AM. Or perhaps I just have an illness.

A party started forming and got underway around 10:30, comprised of RNG WAR WAR WAR RDM WHM. All were 75 but me, to my recollection.

One of the Warriors, Asheress, asked if I had my O-hat yet and I bemoaned the fact that I did not. She'd stumbled across my blog and knew I wanted it badly, and graceously invited me to join a run with her LS sometime next week. They're going for 2-3 other members, so hopefully it won't be a marathon... This does, however, mean that I need to either go farm the eyes, or buy the Hakutaku cluster from a bazaar. I'm not exactly eye-farming material as a WAR, so I'll probably end up buying the cluster. But I'm barely in the 800k range at the moment, so I'll need to work on increasing my sum again.

On the EXP front, I was a flabbergasted noob once more. There were only 3 parties in Caedarva Mire, so the campsite was obvious. I'd never been in a 'merit' style party before and was really not prepared for just how quickly and relentlessly these parties kill. There were stretches where I was never even in 'disengaged' status. A couple of member rotations occurred, but the EXP didn't pause, even when the party was temporarily down to 5 members.

I was humbled as a WAR in this party, which was actually sort of ... encouraging. It means there's plenty of room for improvement, and I like to improve. I could only manage to occasionally pull hate from most of the mobs, as the 2 other Warriors constantly commanded their attention. After seeing these people in action, I'm looking forward to honing my equipment and merited skills once 75 is reached.

The party ended shortly after 1AM, a bit after a catastrophic link of 5 mobs killed a few party members. I managed to survive, but 3 people didn't. Once we raised and EXP'd a bit more as compensation, we proceeded to disband and return to town. The RDM, however, agro'd an Imp on the way back and died again before we could pop our heads out and /assist. And he deleveled to 74 -_-. He said he'd be solo'ing in the Thickets to get the level back.

I'm currently 20k into level 74, a little under half-way there.

On the home stretch

I managed to log in nearly 45 minutes earlier than usual since my son decided to go to sleep early last night. This left me with some additional 'awake' time to hopefully earn some more EXP. Caedarva looked much more promising and had enough room to accommodate at least 2-3 more parties. As I scanned the /sea lists to quickly get a party of my own out there, I received an invitation and accepted.

We had a decent setup of SMN BLM WAR WAR THF NIN and an uncontested camp, so the EXP flowed quickly and steadily. I didn't realize just how fatigued I was until we were about 1.5 hours into exp'ing and I began 'catching' myself drifting into La La Land. I'm sure some of you know that aweful feeling, where you re-focus on the screen and realize that you uh... "lost some time" and quickly scan the log for any disasters. My string of late nights and early mornings was finally catching up to me, in a big way. But I couldn't pass up this opportunity and resolved to stay awake & grind it out.

So I cranked up the iPod and paced around the living room with my controller as I played. If anyone had seen me at that time, they probably would have questioned my sanity.

I kept myself awake for about 15K before giving my notice. Several other people chimed in, and we called it a night.

In the process, I leveled up to 74 and was finally able to play with Utsusemi:Ni.

Tonight will most likely consist of... sleeping. A lot.

40,200 TNL /cry.

Slow & Steady

Glovont, a Warrior who occasionally frequents our LS, was forming a party last night and thankfully sent an invitation my way. All EXP zones but Bibiki were crowded, but we opted for the lesser of two evils and jumped out to the Mamool Ja staging point, setting up camp in the open area outside of the Mamook zone. There were no Paladins or Ninjas available, so for the first time in ages I was duo-tanking with another Warrior. This setup actually turned out OK and gained some amount of stability when a party member swapped in a THF sub, giving us two Trick Attackers. Glovont eventually reached 74 and we phased into a simpler 1st-voke + main tank setup. Well, that was the theoretical setup... I had more ATK on me so hate-swapping wasn't quite that straightforward at times.

The camp was a bit chaotic with so many parties, and we were exposed to pops at almost all times and all angles. Combine this with over-ambitious pulling due to competition, and the Puks' knockback AOE, and our battles often turned volatile. Amazingly, however, everyone kept their head and no one died. The party eventually fizzled due to RDM fatigue and I headed back to town with a little over 7k more EXP and some additional time to LFG and hopefully get a replacement invitation somewhere.

I was eventually invited to another party in the same area. It was on its last legs, but I actually appreciated the more stable pace and much safer camp. We stayed at the 'mouth' to the main area outside the Mamook zone and targeted Sea Puks exclusively. After about 2k, everyone (myself included) was passing out so we jumped back to town and called it a night.

13,500 EXP until I can use Utsusemi:Ni!

EXP lost. EXP regained.

I logged in last night with the intention of EXPing some more but didn't have my hopes up since melee are a dime a dozen on Friday nights.

The LS was preparing to do a run for Atrenore's Healer's Briault quest, so I opted to have some fun with friends rather than LFG while collecting Moat Carps. And it was definitely a fun time. Runs through Beaucedine always put me in the holiday spirit, so I started a FFXI version of Jingle Bells (what with 'dashing through the snow' yadda yadda) and the other folks in the LS took it away. There was lots of running and joking, and the occasional "lolAgro".

Once Norey popped the Altedour I Tavnazia, I got cocky and popped my 2-hour much too early in the fight, underestimating this mob's HP and the power of the Dimensional Death move. He slept all of us and eventually killed me. Zorrandor (75 RDM) hit the dirt a little while later, but fortunately the rest of the group was able to kill it off & get Norey her Tavnazia Mask. Getting the crap kicked out of me caused me to neglect multiple photo opps here, unfortunately.

Since almost everyone was together and the Eldieme Necropolis was a short hike away, we decided to do get Lexxi her Choral Slippers, which require a 3-NM fight in the necropolis. A few more folks, including Jingy, outpost-warped to Beaucedine to join us. I was in bad form that evening, and forgot to take shots of the group until we were in the throes of the fight.

The battle went well and Lexxi got her slippers. A very productive night for the LS!

That same night, Feon graciously offered help with the Morbol fight for the ToAU Mission 12 key item, and we met up in Whitegate. He came with his BRD, Ishmael, and we ran to a safe camp in the woodlands to pull an Ameretat. Unfortunately, I hadn't geared up for evasion and had a terrible time tanking with Utsusemi:Ichi.

The mob hit much too quickly to give me a proper chance to refresh my shadows. I panick-swapped to my AF set and threw up Defender, but not in time to save me from my second death for the evening. Thankfully, Feon snagged a Raise III for me, which took a lot of the sting out of this one.

On our second attempt, Feon lent me his Melody Earrings for the extra evasion and I equipped my AF legs upon his recommendation. We still had a tough time and Feon eventually had to sleep the mob while he recovered MP and I refreshed shadows. We repeated the sleep cycle a couple of times and noticed that the mob wasn't regaining HP past 1/3 health while slept (?!). This was a godsend, enabling us to heal up fully enough to polish him off without too much danger.

Feon, in true fashion, kindly volunteered to duo Colibris with me in the Zoraal Ja's Pkuucha spawn area to regain my lost EXP. The gesture was much appreciated, and I got a brief peek at the NM before it was claimed by the horde of RMT there.

I was nearly passing out from exhaustion by the time I logged out around 2AM, but grateful for the friends I've made and the fun I continue to find in this game.

Placidity

I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe it was fatigue, or maybe my brain is finally adjusting to my second life in Vanadiel. I walked away from my session with the impression that I had a good time, despite the fact that the EXP curse had obviously afflicted me once again. I think my net gain last night was around 500 EXP...

I noticed a Besieged gearing up as soon as I logged on, but it was still in the Preparing phase and stage 3, so I put up my LFG flag and puttered around with my inventory. An invite came within a few minutes and I hopped out to the mire.

The leader's name rang a bell, but I dismissed the negative hunch and joined the group: BRD, RDM, WAR, WAR, WAR, PLD. Aside from the lack of a WHM, this was a good setup... but there was apparently no designated puller. The RDM would spot a mob and spam a /party macro, and no one would move. Very bizarre. The party just had that un-cohesive feel to it, like people were operating on different channels and not all 'there.' We ended up pulling a string of 5 mobs, and somewhere in the shuffle, the RDM died and inexplicably HP'd... to Port Jeuno.

The BRD went down a bit later, and it was up to the melee to beat down the last mob. We were hurt badly from the prior 2 flies, but the tank kept up with the cures on herself and secured hate. As the mob turned on me and my HP dwindled into the red (we were all poisoned), I put up my 2-hour and Rampaged 800 HP off of the Imp before keeling over dead. This allowed the other Warriors to take the mob down in a few hits, and 3 of the 4 melee survived.

I joked that I at least died the way most Warriors like to die, right after a big meaty Rampage.

As the PLD doled out R1's to the party, the BRD leader threw up his hands and told everyone that he would be {Disbanding party}. I have a hunch that the person who asked me to replace him left for reasons other than fatigue. Ah well, net EXP was 500 so I didn't really lose anything and it was a good time-killer before Besieged.

When I returned to town, the advancing trolls had evolved to stage 6. While waiting for the event, I was invited to party again and initially took the offer until I checked the leader out. He had one of those 'funny' names that makes you suspicious, if you know what I mean.

Level 75 and rank 2. Hmmm... Searching for the first few characters of his name revealed a lot of variants. Double-hmmm...

I zoned to Whitegate to get a glance at the rest of the party. Another member was level 75, Rank 1. OK, game over. I laughed at the RMT and disbanded, leaving the one remaining legit player to make his own decision.

I waited for the trolls with a LS friend, Minusjoker (75 BLM). LS discussion ranged from dental surgery, to the Fibonacci sequence, to the average number of spiders swallowed by people each year (the number is 5, if you must know). The trolls took awhile but finally arrived around 11:45PM. We eventually found the troll boss, who looked very impressive, hit extremely hard, and of course had loads of HP.


People tried spamming nukes, which were ineffective, then noticed that Drain spells and Chi Blast worked very well against him. I didn't have either of those options, so I gained TP as best I could and used Full Break whenever possible. We had whittled him down to about 50% HP when the event ended. Unfortunately I had been killed by the boss, had reraised, and was killed again when the mob wandered to my healing spot. So I gained no EXP from the affair, true to form for the night.

A very strange evening, but fun and relaxing overall.

When I blacklist you...

I'll never do it out of anger. 3 things will trigger an insertion into this list:

• You run a casino and spam the /shout channel
• You harrass me over /tell (this has never happened to me)
• Your behavior indicates, without a shadow of doubt, that you can never be trusted.

Last night, someone was added to the list due to the third reason. This happened when, for the second time, I trusted the SMN to stay with the party until EXP got underway rather than jump to conclusions about how bad it was going to be. And for the second time, he used his status as the party lynchpin to completely dismantle it by rudely disbanding as we were moving camp.

How does the saying go? First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me. So, before I forgot my mistake, I made a note of the name and blacklisted them. There's just no point in keeping someone who can't be trusted on your radar.

After this fiasco, I ended up scrambling for a healer and refresher for nearly half an hour before giving up and sending people on their way.

An invitation came about a half hour later, to the usual place, and I *gasp* stayed with the party even when I noted that the only healer was the RDM. We made steady, respectable, EXP and I logged out around 18500 into level 73.

Dragostea Din Tei

Just when you thought that song had left your brain... I go and necro-post it.

But come on, this video deserves to be posted. Too cute! And the Benny Hill finish is wonderful. ^_^

Naja = Dominatrix

Naja Salaheem:

Why didn't ya speak up?
My morningstar gives ya goosebumps, does it?
Heh... That's why ya kept quiet...?
Let me tell ya somethin'.
This isn't just a weapon. It's a tool with which I exprrress 'affection' for my employees!
If I ever make ya bleed with this mace, just think of those drops as my crrrimson tears!

Yeah, I rest my case...

I've reached Aht Urhgan Mission 12 (Royal Puppeteer) but will need to defer the key item (Vial of Jody's Acid) until I can get some assistance in duo'ing or trio'ing the Morbol family mob that drops this RA/EX item.

For further amusement I decided to flag the Dvucca Isle Staging Point, which has a ridiculous walkthrough on the wikipedia. For the edification of adventurers who come after me, please ignore those directions and click on the 'discussion' link on that same page. The alternative mentioned there is faster and less dangerous.


Bring 1 silver imperial coin (100 ISP each), and some Sneak and Invis tools. Either take the ferry to Nashmau (yawn) or use the Runic Portal to access the Azouph Isle staging point and hike to Nashmau from there (or use that trusty bird whistle).

If you hike from Azouph, I'd recommend doing it during the daytime to avoid Jnun aggro, otherwise you'll end up consuming more Silent Oils than you need to if the zone isn't crowded with EXP parties. While making your way to Nashmau, beware the true sight Imps, sound-aggro Elder Treants, and sight-aggro rams. Leeches, birds, and Puktraps will not agro, and thankfully there are large areas with nothing but these mobs on your way to town. Just keep your eyes peeled.

Zone into Nashmau, and take the west exit to Caedarva Mire.

Head west and find the NPC at a cave entrance @ E-11. Trade 1 silver piece to enter the empty Alzadaal Undersea Ruins. Take the teleporter from here to another entrance to Caedarva Mire and talk to the NPC at the end of the tunnel to zone (be sure to do this before using Invis ^_^). Before taking the home stretch to the staging point, use Sneak and Invis since there will be Lamia mobs a few strides away. Then simply follow the right wall, pass the Lamia mobs, and zone to the Dvucca Isle Staging Point. Done.

Now, isn't that better than running around in the Arrapago Reef without a map?

Real Men of Genius

Murrdoc from our linkshell stumbled across this gem, and I couldn't resist posting it.

It's a parody of the Budweizer commercials that have been circulating on the radio since 2000, and oddly enough, manage to remain funny.

Enjoy!

Rampage marathon

I logged in with the intention of catching up on my ToAU missions and proceeded to complete the Mission 7 cutscenes, but was soon dissappointed that I couldn't launch Mission 8 until the next day (midnight JP time). So I put up my flag and gathered my fishing materials together for some carp collection in Al Zahbi, hoping for a Besieged event as a nice diversion.

Of course, I received another Caedarva Mire invitation before I had a chance to cast a line.

The zone wasn't as overcrowded as the night before and we were fortunate to secure the camp at J-8 on the ridge, so we never ran out of mobs. Amazingly, this party went for hours without a refresher. The WHM had subbed SMN, had plenty of hMP gear, and somehow never seemed to run extremely low on MP. Fortunately the leader was BLM, so this added to the MP pool a bit. Nevertheless, I made a point of sending a compliment to the WHM, since she was clearly doing an amazing job. The rest of the party consisted of NIN, THF, WAR, DRK, all in the 72-73 range.

The party was quite lucrative in EXP and absolutely uneventful. There were a few close calls due to last-minute pops, but we pulled through. A BRD was eventually rotated in to replace the leader and a RNG replaced the DRK, and the pulls went into overdrive. By the time I left, I'd been in the party for about 4 hours and it was still going strong.



I'm currently 8400 EXP into level 73 and can finally off-hand the Maneater. My DoT seems to have increased remarkably: the latent effect on the Maneater is an increase from 43 to 49 DMG, supplemented by "hidden" effects of Accuracy +5 and Attack +18. Unfortunately, Amnesia doesn't do wonders for the trigger, since I can remain stuck at 100+%TP for awhile until it wears off, actually leaving me at a disadvantage compared to the Reserve Captain's Pick, which was at least giving me +10 Atk. But I can see the Maneater/Woody combo being very powerful in merit parties that don't involve these blasted Imps.

Tonight will probably consist of reading through more ToAU cutscenes, which are quite enjoyable, although Naja seems to have a bit of a dominatrix complex.

Not that Frohike seems to mind.

yawnEXP

I picked up a collection of SF short stories by Ted Chiang last week and favored reading that on a few evenings, particularly on Thursday and Friday night of last week. Thursday evening greeted me with a Besieged event as soon as I logged in and it was getting a bit too late to hop into a pickup party by the time we repelled the Undead Swarm. So I logged out and read.





I was unable to log in until 10PM on Friday, and I was rather tired. A series of "/sea all" revealed a smorgasbord of melees seeking a party, so I figured an invitation would be slow... if at all likely. I went the lazy route and left my flag up, turned on the /tell chime, and went AFK to read more stories. By 11:30PM, all was still silent, and I logged out.

In case you can't tell, Ted Chiang is quite good. I highly recommend his collection to anyone who enjoys a good Borges-style brain massage. You can get most of his stories in one volume "Stories of Your Life, and Others." I can't wait until he actually writes a novel.

Rather than go the lazy route last night, I jumped on at 9PM and saw a paladin, white mage, and red mage all seeking. I immediately sent the /tells and worked for about 25 minutes to form a party. The RDM wanted a BRD and was too high-level for the rest of our members, so I eventually grabbed a level 70 BRD as soon as he hopped on (thank heavans), and relied on him for Refresh for the rest of the evening. I found Lurick (WAR) seeking and knew I could count on him to stick around; I grabbed a DRK because... I dunno, they seem to need invites, and I think they make fine DD.

Our setup became WHM BRD PLD WAR WAR DRK.

EXP in the mire was slow due to overcrowding, so we picked up the stakes and moved to Bibiki Bay, chaining Hobgoblin Alastors, Toreadors, and Blaggers for awhile until moving to the Hobgoblin Angler camp further south. The transition to the new campsite was messy, leaving Lurick and me to duo a goblin while the rest of the party was stranded at the old camp and the BRD, who had brought a /NIN sub by mistake, kept screaming at us to disengage so he could sleep it. -_- I'd 2-houred and was fairly close to killing the thing, but disengaged in the hopes that the mob could indeed be slept.

In hindsight, I should have gone down swinging. Lurick died as well, and the poor BRD followed soon thereafter.

Fortunately our WHM used Raise III, so the only significant penalty for the incident was down-time. Lurick bowed out around 11:30 and I found another WAR pretty quickly. This one was a Joyeuse-toting rank 10 with a Rajas Ring and was quite fun to watch in action. I complimented him on the sword and ring, and he complimented me on my damage as we proceeded to hack away the hours.

The DRK eventually disconnected but remained on my party list due to a glitch, so I was unaware of his departure until some other folks asked me about a replacement. Once the WAR dropped and I re-invited him, the glitch was fixed and we hobbled along with 5 until I could find a melee. I was favoring WAR/MNK/THF/DRK/SAM in my searches and had completely forgotten about DRG. -_- Shame shame on me. Once we got the poor DRG that I had been ignoring, the party cruised along, and the dragoon had the fortune of working on his latent in the process.

Sleepiness started to take hold around 1:30 AM (which felt like 2:30 to me thanks to stupid DST... you know kids don't really know about DST, so they don't sleep in that "extra" hour), and I brought in a Monk to replace me, passing the lead to the uber-WAR.

I'm currently 22K into level 72, and I'm effectively bored of EXPing again. That... didn't take much, did it?

Fortunately my friend Feon pinged me about joining up with a group to complete the ToAU missions. This was a fortuitous offer and I, of course, accepted with caveats about my limited time windows, which can shrink when my son refuses to go to sleep. I'll work my way as far as I can tonight, since I'm currently sitting at mission 7, and I assume they need help with one of the BCNM further down the line.

Musical chairs

That's what some people seem to want to play when they agree to join a party. I joined one in Caedarva Mire last night with the intent of getting a ways into level 72 and testing the use of meat rather than sushi. I did accomplish this, and I'm now 7000 EXP into 72 and wearing the Woodville's Axe rather than the old Tabarzin. The Reserve Captain's Pick will remain in place until I reach level 73 and can finally equip the Maneater.

However...

I need to address the people who like to play musical chairs rather than EXP. When it's 10PM and the party gets off to a rough start, immediately dropping out of it doesn't solve anything, and dropping without warning (the dreaded fake DC) is certainly a great way to sabotage the EXP of the people who are left behind, and garnering a questionable reputation in the minds of people who actually remember names. How hard is it to simply state that you don't think the party is going well and that you're searching for a replacement? I mean... give people 10 minutes. That's all it takes sometimes; to either get into the groove or find a replacement. It's not like leaving will free you up for another party at such an hour.

This happened several times in our group, and it had all started due to inevitable overcrowding and slow pulls. The WHM suddenly dropping out got the ball rolling nicely. We kept plowing forward in fits & starts, and people kept getting discouraged and DC'ing. In the final stages of the party, we actually had a very nice setup, supplemented by mutual respect for the members who decided to tough it out while the party kept mutating. But...we could have earned twice the EXP if people had just calmed down a bit, and used their head.

In any case, my consumption of Meat kabobs rather than Sushi led to some interesting results. With Aggressor and Berzerk up, almost all hits connected for 75-95 damage. Rampages flucuated between 750 to the low 900's ... without a Bard or Corsair. I was wearing gear amounting to +37 accuracy, and Aggressor added 25 to that. Unfortunately, somewhere in that extra 25 from Aggressor lies the magical accuracy level I must acheive to truely use meat in EXP parties. I missed more than I cared to until I could get Aggressor back up. I can't parse to determine whether the increase in DoT during the Aggressor phase was outweighing the decrease during the cooldown. So it was back to Sushi once the food wore off. The damage from there on out was respectable and more predictable, but the numbers when using meat were much more promising.

I'll definitely try this again when I have an Optical Hat. I might even experiment again once I can get the funds to add some accuracy on the ring slots (swap out the Venerer for a Woodsman/Sniper) and ear slots (exchanging Spike Earrings for Assault Earrings).

Dunes: 1 - Frohike: 2

I'm at level 13 on White Mage, verging on 14, and I'm now prepared to put it down for a bit, at least until the folks on my LS feel like partying with their level 12 jobs.

The first party I got was fabulous: PLD tank and no PL. It got off to a rough start with a crazy puller who basically ... wouldn't stop, even when vehemently told to stop, and he spoke English. After I threatened to let him die on the next pull, he spared us the pleasure of booting him and dropped out of the party. We found a sane puller within seconds. I went from 10 to 12 with no horrible incidents besides one over-ambitious pull... I used Benediction and the PLD used Invincible and we all lived to see some more EXP.

The following night was devoid of invites, until a blind one came in. No blind invite I have ever taken has turned out well, and I should just make it a rule to never take one again. To convey the quality of this party I will quote the MNK leader (Rank 2): "Any melee job can tank at these levels. Besides, we have a backup healer." He had asked the Warrior to disband right after he dinged "out of our level spread"... on the first fight (?!). However the leader himself was the same level. He proceeded to invite a Thief replacement. The party became MNK MNK THF BLM RDM WHM. Hate control was a disaster, they pulled IT goblins, no one wanted to actually tank, and several people died with home points in Bastok and/or Jeuno. I disbanded and wished them all good luck, then sent a /tell to the leader letting him know that he was dead wrong about the whole... tanking thing.

Last night's party was complete crap until I fixed it and got rid of the PL. The setup was initially DRK WAR BLM BLM RDM WHM. The Red Mage, a 16-year-old rank 1, was being powerleveled by his father, a 60ish WHM. The DRK would end up tanking most of the time because the WAR didn't know how to do it.

The Red Mage meleed the entire time. Strike 1.

The PL was so aweful that he didn't know how to handle a 3-lizard link (the WAR was pulling), and let the entire party die. I was already annoyed at not being able to do my job, but this was ridiculous. I was getting the worst of both worlds. Strike 2.

The WAR, in some powerleveled stupor, brought in a WHM as replacement before he left. OK.

The DRK eventually left and passed me the lead, and I found a Ninja. I noticed the RDM was level 10, and the BLM had just dinged 14. Everyone else was in the 12-14 range. Hmmm... /em taps his fingers.

I didn't need to wait long before the kid started asking me to kick out the BLM, and threatening to leave and 'take his PL with him' if I didn't. I told him the decision to leave or stay was his, and asked him how close he was to 11... 300 EXP. He was ready to kick someone over a gap that was going to be closed in a few mobs. Strike 3.

On his second complaint, I told him I wouldn't be kicking the BLM and repeated that the decision to stay or leave was his. So he took his stupid PL and walked away, leaving me to create a proper party. Unfortunately this is what I had to build from: NIN, WHM, WHM, BLM, BLM. I found a WAR seeking within seconds. The next part sucked for me, but I think benefited the Rank 1's that comprised the rest of the party. I invited a WAR to replace me.

So it went from a powerleveled death-trap to a survivable party where people could actually learn their jobs. I walked to Bastok, helping a few folks along the way, and checked on my party before logging out. They were doing well, and I hope all of them continue to do so. Without a powerleveler.

Nunyenunc and Tom Tit Tat

I camped the bird NM as soon as I got on tonight and was promptly slapped by a level 20ish monk, and checked by another /anon camper in the area. I ignored the rude monk and asked the other camper to kindly notify me of the ToD if he got it.

About an hour and a half later, I gave the ToD and position to both campers and walked away with my Pilgrim's Wand. As Tsakiki advised, I hung around the positions indicated on the ffxi-atlas map rather than the FFXIclopedia entry, and the NM spawned just south of the path in that area, a little ways up the Starfall Hillock grade.


While I was camping, I stumbled across a Mandy NM by the name of Tom Tit Tat, who dropped Fruit Punches. Unfortunately, I didn't take a close look at them and failed to notice that they were RA only, not RA/EX. So I threw them out... I was kicking myself later when I saw that they were in fact sellable and worth about 40k on the Jeuno AH (although sales are quite slow on them).

Ah well.

The rest of the evening was spent getting to Jeuno and chatting along the way. I bumped into Atreiyu in Windy Waters and caught up with CC goings-on, and explained to him why I hadn't been on the shell much. He understood and we agreed to keep in touch. I do look forward to his wedding with Gunda, which is slated to happen sometime next year. That'll be quite the momentous occasion.

I turned in early since real estate agents would be invading our home early the next day. On that side of things, we've finally purchased a bona fide house, which I'm very excited about, and we're on the verge of selling the condo (fingers crossed). Things are going to be... busy in the coming months.

Microsoft, why hast thou forsaken me?

Xbox Live experienced an 'unscheduled outage' last night, and I was unable to log in. So I occupied myself with Oblivion while watching the season finale of Project Runway.

Screw you Jeffrey; your Gwen Stefani crap annoyed me from day 1, and your final collection was no better. Grrr... It should have been Ulli.

I took my anger out on poor Adamus Philida. And I was tame; sticking to the mission and killing him with the Rose of Sithis and taking his severed finger to his successor's desk for a little bonus.

Some people find extremely creative ways to vent, however. If you've had to deal with the 'Adoring Fan' in the game, you'll appreciate the sadistic glee in this video (the player obviously modded stuff quite a bit):

Why people need to stop freaking out

About the deflating economy.

I've tried to phrase exactly why the deflation isn't catastrophic when compared to the overall value of gil, but this post did it for me.

The only caveat I would give is that this explanation only holds water if you actually use the profits in a timely manner. If you sit on the profits and the market skyrockets again, you just shot yourself in the foot (skilling up Marksmanship?).

Yara Ma Yha Who

I killed this Tahrongi NM before I had the chance to take a snapshot. I lucked out and he popped on my second Distilled Water trade, so total camp time on this one was only 50 minutes, fortunately.

With my Fasting Ring acquired, I ran over to West Saruta to try the lottery spawn on the Pilgrim's Wand NM. No luck on this one, though I suspect I was camping the wrong positions. FFXIclopedia gives one location whereas the ffxi-atlas map, gives another. I'll have to try the other spot on Wednesday.

The mage honeymoon is over

With both BLM and WHM at 10, I now need to take the plunge and go partying. Solo'ing these levels was quite fun, although I'm surprised at how much easier it was to level WHM. BLM just seems extremely anemic outside of a party at these levels, especially for an Elvaan with a limited MP pool. I probably died around 4 or 5 times on BLM, while WHM only garnered 1 death.

I spent last night shopping for all the new equipment I'll need. Due to my race, I'm going to need compensatory equipment which will not come cheaply or easily. This includes the Astral Ring, which goes for 700k or so on Ifrit, and the Fasting Ring, which is 'free' in terms of gil but not in terms of time. This RA/EX ring drops from a force-popped sapling NM in Tahrongi Canyon, but the pop doesn't always occur and can only be fed once every 50 minutes or so (some recommend after 22:00 Vanadiel time). Needless to say there are horror stories of people going 6-9 rounds with no pop. I'll give up after 4, since I need my sleep and sanity.

Next on my list will be the Pilgrim's Wand, which gives a nice +2 hMP effect. I can macro this in along with a cookie before resting (assuming Ginger Cookies hMP effect stacks with this wand's hMP?), then macro the standard +MND wand when I get up. This wand drops from a lottery spawn bird NM in West Sarutabaruta, so I'll probably camp it on Wednesday night.

Tonight will be spent pouring Distilled Water on the ground in the Canyon (zzzzz), and tomorrow will be Xbox Live maintenance, so no FFXI for me then.

Noobin on up

On a whim, I'd decided to get to work on my White Mage sub after acquiring the Maneater. Solo EXP in Ronfaure just seemed like it would be a nice vacation after the two weeks of crafting. And my hunch was correct.



I went the melee route as recommended by "those who came before me", on various boards or wiki pages. Loading up on Selbina Milk helped to reduce the down time while leveling White Mage to 8, but I was still burning through my MP with Dia pulls and Healing Magic skillups. So I still had some down time here & there.

Last night, I prepared to level up BLM, since it was now a gimped sub for my WHM, and decided I needed a nice cheap MP refresh to complement my HP regen. I went the lazy route and simply asked the LS, since many folks have leveled mage jobs, and Jingy recommended Pineapple Juice. This was something I could craft cheaply, so I purchased 8 stacks of Kazham Pineapples from the regional vendor in Port Bastok and put most of them on Frohike, along with a partial stack of water crystals.

Then Jingy recommended a Jack 'o Lantern, which I remember being a nice lowbie accuracy and evasion food. I looked up the recipe and did a double-take... As long as one of the towns owns Lower Elshimo, this synth is super-cheap, and people sell Jacks for 6-7k (probably because most buy the beeswax rather than HQ'ing it). So that's another recipe to tuck in the back of my mind as a good Bazaar synth. I have a few stacks of Ogre Pumpkins for now.

Before I headed out, Jingy kindly gave me some Pamama Au Lait which were quite a bit more effective than the Selbina Milk, albeit unstackable: 2 HP regen for 10 minutes. Nice!

When I finally made it into the forest I ate the Jack o' Lantern, the juice, and the au lait... and marveled at the contrast from my early days here. I simply had no down time. At all. The pugils in particular were wonderful targets because Stone killed them quickly, and they would drop water crystals which I'd forgotten to stock up, so fortunately I never ran out of juice ingredients.

Loading up on all this food led to over-confidence, and a few close calls. But the MPK adjustment made it rather easy to come out alive, especially when a linked mob happened to be a mage and would stop to cast...only to despawn. And since I wouldn't disengage from the target, I could still pause to throw some newbie-nukes at the more persistent chasers and continue running as my HP regenerated. A bit of this and I could just turn around and finish off the mob. Fun stuff!

I logged off with BLM at 6, and plan to take it to 10 tonight. Then I'll switch back to WHM and probably attend a few Valkurm parties once I hit 10 on that job. I'm still reading up on how to not suck as a WHM, in case this whim snowballs into something else. But I have a hunch the Dunes will probably beat the 'noob allure' out of me.

Finally got the Maneater

I dropped the Black Ink market, crafted all of my Echo Drops and sold them, and took on Poison Potion again, while keeping an eye on Sleeping Potion and a few other cheap synths. I managed to sell about 200k worth of the product before more overcrowding brought the price back down to 20k/stack (from 25-27). Sleeping Potion remained a joke, and still does.

It seems to me that the 60ish Alchemy market is bottoming out again. Granted I didn't exactly put in 100% focus, but it still seems like the 2 weeks dragged themselves out longer than they needed to. It should not have taken this long to make the gil.

I barely had the 2 million but needed some quick buffer money in case someone put a Maneater up for an additional 100k. And I also didn't want be a complete pauper by the time I actually did get the Axe. So I quested the Teleport-Dem scroll and sold it for 200k. I can always buy one later if I ever feel the urge to... tele-taxi?

So I took my wad of money and did a lot of this:

You can't see it, but my cot is a little off to the side. And my megaphone is on the ground.

I spent awhile fruitlessly camping the Auction House and shouting for the Maneater in Whitegate and Lower Jeuno. Of course there were a few people who couldn't resist responding to "{Maneater} {Can I have it?} {Reward:} 2,000,000 {Gil}" with a witty pun on the weapon's name. Yeah, that didn't get old fast ;-_-.

When 10:00PM came around, I decided that it was time to have some fun while the night was still young and go back to my home town to level White Mage and Black Mage in preparation for leveling Beastmaster. As soon as I got off the airship, I sent 2 million to my Jeuno mule and decided to check the AH there again... just in case.

And whaddya know. I didn't bother trying to haggle. I bid the 2 mil, sent the Maneater to Frohike, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I now have 200k in my pocket, and some peace of mind in knowing that my expensive gear purchases are now mostly done before the holidays. I can weather the storm with what I've got for awhile.

I spent the rest of the evening drinking Selbina Milk and clubbing things to death. White Mage is at level 5, Black Mage at 3, and I can't wait to play around with BST.

Mercredi sucks

This yahoo has succeeded in dropping Black Ink from the livable 12k-10k range to an embarrassing 8k or less. If anyone on the Ifrit sees him, please give him a nice /slap. I mean what the hell? It's barely worth filling AH slots with these now. I can HQ these like crazy, but it's almost to the point where I'd be better off selling the Nebs. But... too late for that, since I'm now sitting on upwards of 20 stacks of this product. I oughta smack Mercredi into next Jeudi.

The Poison and Sleeping potion markets have recovered from a week-long slump so it may be time to pick those up again for a quick 200 or 300k jaunt. And I have tons of honey that I held onto for ... no reason really, so it's probably time to sell some Echo drops. Still not sure if they're really worth my time, but I hate staring at multiple stacks of ingredients, especially when I'm so close to the coveted 2 million.

In other news, I went for an easy 80k and completed the quick and painless Sandy quest: The Rumor. This basically involved going to the Oubliette and giving a vial of Beastman Blood (1.5k) to a vampire in exchange for a Drain scroll (worth about 80k). The vampire's description of his 'affliction' and 'research' for a 'cure' made me wish there were such a semi-permanent status effect in this game... they use vampirism quite well in the Elder Scrolls games and I could picture it being used effectively in FFXI as well: weakness in daytime, strength at night, some DRK'ish absorb abilities, strength vs undead, weakness to light spells, and a quest to remove the 'affliction' if needed. Meh, daydreaming I guess.

Savage Blade

After Zorrandor broke his latent, the LS tried to put a Savage Blade run together but people's schedules didn't allow for it that week, so the event had to wait until last night. It was an adventure, in parts, even though a large percentage of it was spent waiting for poor Zorr and Lycas to run around to all 4 columns to unlock the Altepa Gate.

The group gathered at Rabao:

• Atrenore - 70 DRG
• Lexxi - 62 WHM
• Lycasdemus - 69 PLD
• Minusjoker - 75 BLM
• Murrdoc - 62 DRK
• Zorrandor - 75 RDM

We headed out to J-9 in Western Altep and made our way through Quicksand Caves (the Tribunus VII-I map) to the 'waiting room' just south of the Altepa Gate.

For anyone unfamiliar with this quest, it involves zoning into four different entrances to Quicksand Caves from Western Altepa, and in 2 of the 4 cases, opening weight-triggered doors which give you access to sand pits, which drop you down to passageways that lead to the activation points for the 4 pillars. The weight-triggered doors require a duo unless the player is a Galka (no joke). And of course the path to each pillar is littered with Anticans and Spiders that will aggro anyone below 71-2ish. Once all 4 pillars are active, the Altepa Gate opens, giving access to a special area in Quicksand Caves populated by high-level Anticans, several NM's, and of course containing the ??? point for the WSNM.

Although Zorr had cleared the 2 solo-able pillars earlier (Topaz and Ruby), they had apparently been reset by the time we all made it out to Altepa, so Lycas and Zorr headed out to trigger the remaining pillars while we sat in the waiting room and killed the single Ant that would pop there occasionally.


After awhile we started goofing around while Zorr and Lycas did the heavy lifting. We pulled the occasional mob for fun. Murrdoc and Minusjoker used their Chocobo whistles and raced their birds up and down the trench.

We did eventually make it through the gate.

While waiting for Zorr and Lycas to return from their last pillar, I zoned into QC and went poking around downstairs to check for the Ant NM that typically blocks the path to the ???. I didn't get very far before I felt quite uneasy and turned the hell around. Most ants there conned DC to me, and I didn't want to put the group in the awkward position of attempting to raise me in such a place.

Once we all zoned in, I did my best to warn everyone about the NM Antican Praetor that agros through Sneak and lurks at the 4-way intersection on our way to the ???. But one of us ended up agro'ing the NM anyway and we all ran back, poisoned, battered, and laughing.

Our second attempt was successful once we waited for the NM to move a bit south, and we made it to the room we would need to clear before triggering the WSNM. To my recollection there were around 6 DC ants here, but they didn't present too much of a problem to our group.

Once the room was clear, Zorr triggered the ??? and the Scorpion NM Girtablulu appeared. Lycas took on the tanking role, and within seconds the scorpion used its dreaded move: Death Scissors. This hit poor Lycas for upwards of 1200 damage, resulting in death. I immediately 2-houred, dropped Berserk, lost my shadows pretty quickly, and took a few hits before I could get my shadows back up. Each strike took a good 200+ chunk out of me.

I tried skillchaining Mistral Axe after Zorr's Decimation but failed miserably as my Utsusemi spell interfered... so we kept slashing, piercing, and nuking away at it. I'll admit I lost my head a bit when Lycas died and by the time I got my wits about me the process was more than half-way over.

We eventually defeated the NM and Zorr got his key item for Savage Blade.

My sincere thanks to the group for a very fun evening, {Congratulations!} to Zorrandor for unlocking a very powerful weaponskill, and {/comfort} to Lycasdemus for the being the unfortunate victim of such a nasty mob skill.

Must...sell...more...Potion...

Sorry for the lack of updates. I could have done a few posts, but all of them would have simply consisted of several shapshots of myself crafting and camping shops. That's about all I've been doing...

I'm making steady progress to the 2 million gil I'll need for the Maneater. I'm currently at 1.33 mil and have a few more stacks of Poison Potion, which if sold at the 30k average will bring me to close to 1.5 mil. I'll let the Poison Potion market cool down a bit and move on to Black Ink this evening, fishing up Nebs on the ferry.

The 2 million should be reached around the end of the work-week, freeing me up for...anything other than crafting for a bit.

I came. I saw. I rampaged.

Sales on my Alchemy items are progressing steadily, and no one seems to be flooding or massively undercutting the products I'm selling, although Carbon Fiber sales are a bit slower than expected. Poison Potion has resumed its 30k price-point, and I'm tempted to camp in Bibiki again since most of my stacks have sold. Fingers crossed here. All it really takes is one determined moron to ruin the market for a week.

By the time I put up my last scraps of Sleeping Potion on the AH last night, I was out of materials and didn't feel like schlepping more Bomb Ash from my Bastok mule to make Firesand stacks...so I put up my flag and grabbed some food.

An invitation came within minutes for the usual Caedarva Mire party. Atrenore and Lycasdemus were in an EXP party out there on their Dragoon and Paladin respectively, so I got to see both of them as I made my way out to... wherever the camp was going to be. There was a bit of milling around until we all arrived and settled.

We checked Imp Alley but two roaming parties were already killing everything there. The lake camps were also taken. So we perched on the hill at the NE corner of K-8 and killed imps, flies, and Jnun for a few hours. The leader was a Bard, so I was able to beat my 1008 rampage with a 1022 on another Jnun. Most other WS damage fluctuated between 400-700, with the occasional 800-900 fluke, usually on the Jnun.

It was a DC-happy night. Between my party and Nore/Lycas, we had about 4 disconnects. One of them was our Ninja, which didn't seem to phase the party: they kept pulling and let me de facto tank, so I had to kill Berserk for awhile and use Defender quite a bit. Fortunately the NIN returned. About 30 minutes later the THF disconnected permanently so we got a WAR replacement and kept going with a pretty good EXP setup: NIN, WAR, WAR, BLU/THF, WHM, BRD.

I kept screwing up the mob alignment to the consternation of the the BLU/THF, and I apologized profusely, explaining that facing the tank was practically programmed into me from years of SATA setups.

We suffered only one death when an Imp slept everyone immediately after the other WAR had rampaged. You can guess who died there. Oddly, the BRD kept ordering the WHM to R3 the fallen warrior, as if s/he didn't know how to play the job. Very...strange. To make matters weirder, this resulted in the WHM blacklisting the BRD for the remainder of the party, and yes they actually stayed. Odd folk.

During the largely uneventful EXPing, I was able to chat sporadically with the shell, and we eventually all waxed nostaligic about old videogame titles (Jingy was watching a documentary on the subject), almost all of us revealing our advanced age in the process. Platforms ran the gamut from Intellivision to Commodore 64, or in my case Odyssey (aka Videopac in France) and Amstrad. And yes, some of us are old enough to have played the first Zelda during our high school years (/em raises his hand), although I failed to reveal this to the group.

At an earlier point, Lycas dinged 69 on his Paladin while my HP was in the deep red, so all he got from me was a 'Woot!'. So a belated, proper, {Congratulations!} to Lycas is in order.

I myself am about 6k away from equipping my Woodville's Axe. But that'll have to wait.

Keeping busy

Just to try something different I had decided to camp Centurio X-I for some nice scrolls on Friday and was getting ready to head out to the Quicksand Caves as soon as I logged in. Coincidentally, Jingy and Minusjoker were both already out there in the spawn room; Jingy to skillup his Guard ability, and Minusjoker to get a coffer key. All three of us were getting some EXP for our NPCs, so it turned into a full party. A couple of people had killed Centurio within minutes of my arrival, so I sorta...gave up on camping it and proceeded to kill pretty much everything in the area for the coffer key.

When Minusjoker went AFK for a minute, I decided to pull another Antican but got a little too big for my britches and linked 3 of them. I killed two, and whittled the third one down, but died in the process. Jingy finished it off, and thankfully didn't die.

Lurick came in sometime that night to level his NPC... I didn't chat with him much but I think he was procastinating: his WAR was still level 70 so he probably hadn't beaten Maat yet. I didn't ask if he'd given it a third try.

We left once MJ's key dropped and I logged out, confused about my experience points since I still appear to be 20k TNL. I must have underestimated my EXP on the last update.

I logged in sporadically throughout the morning on Saturday to buy up Cobalt Jellyfish in Bibiki Bay and craft it all into Mercury. When you're playing in the living room with 2 kids all morning, firing up FFXI every hour or so for a mini-session is actually pretty easy and convenient ^_^. I might make this a weekly ritual on Saturdays, depending on how long the Poison Potion market lasts.

By the time I logged in for my evening session, I was sitting on 18 stacks of Mercury and moved on to Carbon Fiber which was selling quite well at 20k per stack. After crafting about a dozen stacks of these, I noticed the LS was gearing up to get a couple of members through LB1, so I threw on the only gear I'd left in my MH and warned the group. They were going to be playing with a male Elvaan warrior in full artifact armor. I remembered to bring Blinding Potions this time.

We decided to do the Papyrus run first, since this usually takes the longest, and we headed for the 'easy' camp in hopes that no one else was going for the paper drop that night. We were the only ones there and proceeded to kill Lichs and other assorted mobs. Zorrandor was working on breaking the latent on his Sapara of Trials for the Savage Blade weaponskill, so he and I eventually set up Fusion (Spinning Axe + Flat Blade) since he unfortunately couldn't use Red Lotus Blade as a RDM.

The paper refused to drop and the Lich spawns were sparse, so the Zorr and I stayed at our camp while the rest of the group took the long trip through the Glacier to enter the Necropolis at the F-5 entrance from Batallia Downs. I skillchained with Zorr until I was close to passing out around 1:45AM and called it a night. I wished the LS luck on the paper and the rest of the items.

It appears they were indeed lucky. Murrdoc posted the following report to the LS forum the next day:

First off...congrats to Mal and Q for getting all three LB1 items last night! After trying to get the drops near the bones camp for an hour or so, we relocated to the northwestern part Necropolis map where it was a matter of what...20 minutes? For BOTH drops! o.O How totally insane...I've never seen the papyrus double drop...well, ever? lol. Someone was smiling on Q and Mal last night^^ Then, we were off to GC, where Zorr solo'ed back to back bombs for back to back coal drops...I think we were there for a grand total of 5 minutes lol. We did spend a little more time in CN fighting exo's for the mold...but that had more to do with the giller pt in the exo room than anything else :P

Once the ball got rolling, though...all three items x 2 in a little over two hours! /hurray

I discovered yesterday morning that Zorr also broke his latent on the mob immediately following our last one. So we got quite a bit accomplished that night, and I was proud to have participated in at least some of it. Some pictures of the group:



It seemed like the team was gearing up for the Savage Blade WSNM last night, which would include a very interesting run for opening the Altepa Gate. It sounded dangerous and I wanted to participate and take some pictures, but a couple of our mages were on leave for a few days, so we slated this run for a later date.

I spent the night crafting Poison Potion and killing mushrooms in Spore Hollow for Sleepshrooms. I've got 6 or 7 stacks of shrooms and will be ready to craft these into Sleeping Potion tonight.

This and Echo Drops (and perhaps some Firesand) will round out my merchandise for the week:

• Poison Potion: 18 stacks @ 27k = 486k
• Carbon Fiber: 12 stacks @ 18k = 216k
• Sleeping Potion: 7 stacks @ 30k = 210k
• Echo Drops: 10 stacks @ 10k = 100k
• Firesand: ??? stacks @ 20k = ???

So it looks like be back up to 1.5 mil sometime this week. Another crafting session next weekend should get me enough gil to grab the Maneater before the holiday inflation maelstrom hits the server.

I feel pretty...oh so pretty

At level 71, I'm amazed at how good I look. Yes, when you reach my level as a Warrior, you too can look as awesome as...this:



I put some little comment tags on that first photo, in case you want to know the proper nomenclature for the components of this amazing gear set.

In fact, I looked so tremendous as Besieged began that I actually caused mobs to /say "o_O;" followed by a weird line in the status log before promptly killing me off:

[mob_name] is intimidated by Frohike's fashion sense.

I've never seen that before. Very cool.

After Besieged was over, I didn't have enough time to spam-shout for a ZM4 group, and I'd spent the last couple of nights fruitlessly doing this, so I put up my flag (sorry Tuuf, I promise I'll get on the ZMs) and got a party with an entirely Japanese group. They took about a half hour to find a tank, and for whatever reason they decided on a Bibiki Bay camp after cycling through several other bizarre options including The Boyahda Tree and Dragon's Aery.

Our roster was: WHM, BLM, BRD, NIN, RNG, WAR.

It went rather well and everyone was on their game. I saved the Ninja from death a few times when a Hobgoblin would land those nasty crits on the triple-attack. But it happened one time too many and my attention slipped, resulting in tank death. This left me no recourse but to don my full AF and cause the mob to suicide bomb almost immediately. Otherwise the party went smoothly, and my goofy looking gear actually performed quite well...unfortunately. I'm about 20k TNL.



I woke up this morning with 'In the Navy' stuck in my head because my new LS is insane. I have a feeling I'm going to fit right in.

/sanctimonious drama off

My apologies to anyone who sat through that rant from a couple of days ago. I'm not going to be disingenuous and edit that post. When you cut out all the sanctimonious huff and puff what it comes down to is missing old friends who've mostly parted with the shell because of social forces in the game that I wish weren't there. I really will miss them and several other folks on CC.

That's all for now. Just had to get that out.

The start of something new

I had the good fortune of logging in as the Mamool Ja were retreating from Al Zahbi last night, leaving me with a rather large audience in Whitegate to hear my shout-spam for the Greenman WSNM battle. A Japanese party picked me up within 15 minutes of shouting and we were off to The Sanctuary of Zitah to chop down a tree. The fight lasted 3-4 minutes but was pretty uneventful, aside from seeing the fireworks of Spiral Hell and Savage Blade... and how quickly a DRK can rip hate away from a PLD.


We checked the ??? after the battle to recover the key item "Annals of Truth" and Tele-Dem'd out to Konschtat Highlands for the long walk to Bastok Metalworks. Here Iron Eater gave us a thankfully brief "voiceover" to a rather cheesy sensei-student flashback and awarded us with our final Great Axe weaponskill: Steel Cyclone. It looks pretty in action, but is rather difficult to snapshot, so pardon the crappy picture.

I'd recently offered my help and companionship to an active and small social linkshell by the name of Lifthrasir that I'd found on the Ifrit community forums, and I had received a very friendly response from its members, including the leader. So I had the privilege of meeting several of them last night and helped them out with the San D'Oria Rank 7 fight, which was quite a bit of fun...running around Ranperre and goofing off while we waited for everyone to arrive. They're a very charismatic tight-knit group of people, for the most part grown adults, several with children my age. It really felt...nice being part of such a group. I felt at home in a very brief amount of time. I can only hope they'll let me hang out again sometime.

On linkshells

This is a rant post. The 'report card' post will follow either later this afternoon or this evening.

I've grown disenfranchised and a bit frustrated with the CatastrophyCrafters linkshell, which has become progressively more quiet with the conspicuous absence of several longstanding regular members, either due to a virtual absence (shell on + absolute non-response) or real one (shell off).

It feels much as it did last year, as if the shell were created on a whim by the original leader to just get some people together, then virtually abandoned in favor of other activities with other shells. In essence, it has become a large chat room and nothing more, although it had in fact started out as something more. Yes, I like chatting, but I also enjoy activities with these people, and the leadership seems to have given up in this area...once again.

When I found out last night that several of my friends had basically emigrated to yet another "endgame linkshell", known as PhoenixDown, I became resigned to the death of what I had once known to be CatastrophyCrafters: an active social shell with a nice mix of new and veteran players having fun doing activities together and helping newer members progress.

On general principle, I will not apply to nor join PhoenixDown. I've grown exasperated with the fractured concept of activities in this game and such linkshells are a part of this broken model, in my opinion.

I shouldn't have to switch to another shell to enjoy endgame related activities, nor switch to another to socialize with the people I've befriended. The concept of 'applying' to a linkshell is also broken and detrimental, and mostly a pretense at objective selectivity in most cases.

I want to be in a group of people who don't feel the need to pigeonhole their activities. People who actually focus on coordinating said activities, have fun together, and support each other rather than farming members out to activity-specific shells to 'get the job done.' After 2 years with the linkshell, I think all of us deserve more respectful engagement and participation from members in the existing group. And after 2 years, my own patience is coming to an end.

I would understand this happening in a shell with an unbalanced roster or social schisms. But this wasn't the case with CC. There were so many mid to high-level players in this group who, for the most part, got along and could have accomplished something together. But no one picked up the ball, and almost every one has lapsed into the BS mentality of "graduating into" an endgame LS, with the occasional return to CC to throw the newbies a bone or just... chat until the next pickup party. Sad...

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to salvage my connection to the group.

All I know is I can't keep the shell on permanently anymore.

Greenman, here I come

Thanks to a skillup/latent party this evening, I've successfully broken the latent effect on the Axe of Trials and traded it for the key item (Map to the Annals of Truth), which I'll use to force-pop the NM Treant by the name of Greenman to acquire my final Great Axe weaponskill: Steel Cyclone. This WS is STR modified and TP-multiplied, and therefore typically used at 200% TP...or less if using the Martial Bhuj for the TP bonus.

I took a couple more parties after the last one I reported to gain the full 300 WS points. I was forced to take a Kuftal party for the last leg of the process, since I wasn't getting any bites for a party in the tree and someone else was spamming for a latent-busting party in the aforementioned zone. So I acquired no Great Axe skillups beyond the 250 I reached last night, which is actually pretty good considering the cap was 251 right before I dinged 71.

I'm going on our first family camping trip with the kids tomorrow, so I probably won't have any updates until Monday.

Happy gaming, everyone, and have a good weekend!

Why I probably won't be endgaming in FFXI

I think this thread pretty much sums up the morass that comprises Ifrit's endgame "community". What a disaster.

Even if I had the time, I'd probably have to say {Thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass}.

Two birds, one stone...or...Great Axe

And we weren't killing...birds. Oh I give up. Frohike misses the Post Title.

In order to simultaneously skillup Great Axe and break the latent on the Axe of Trials, I've spent the past couple of nights killing lots and lots of crabs in The Boyahda Tree, closing level 2 chains with various people. I haven't had the fortune of closing level 3 chains yet, but I basically took all the help I could get.

Les and Lee (Gimppy and Rocco respectively) helped me last night on the first leg of the latent break before passing out. At midnight, I still managed to recruit another skillup group, but 2 of the 6 didn't understand the skill vs. mob level concept and had to disband.

I had a much faster response shout-seeking in Whitegate rather than Jeuno tonight, and ended up landing a BRD and WHM, and 3 WAR and a SAM, within about 15-20 minutes of shouting. I added "190+ skill recommended" caveats to the shouts, but one of the WAR still "discovered" the principle once we started killing crabs and he announced his GA was level 120 and wasn't connecting very much. He still stuck around long enough to unlock Calamity on his regular Axe.

The process has been very relaxed, and actually enjoyable until the sleepiness sets in.

I'm now roughly 177/300 on the latent (I think I forgot to log a few WS here & there).

What next?

The past couple of nights have been inviteless, and I've been unable to scrounge up enough people who are willing to party. So I've mostly been fishing, and thinking about next steps. The O-hat and a couple of 2 million gil axes, among other things, loom out there. I have no sky access, haven't cracked the promies, and need to progress further in my crafting.

To be honest, crafting and fishing are becoming more alluring by the day, but I'm hesitant to fully go in this direction, since I believe part of that impetus is self-doubt. Can I really push the rest of the way to 75? Am I ready?

But another part of it is an attempt to be realistic. I'll probably never participate in more than a few random sky runs, and CoP, while nice, sounds like a monumental pain for ... what? Some storyline and sea access for Limbus? Am I Limbus material when I play such weird time windows? Maybe I should look into Dynamis, but that effort just seems so time-consuming and draining with the Dynamis LS mentality.

In mulling these thoughts, discarding some, shuffling others, I'm wondering if it's time to prepare for another job. And this, of course, brings me back to the gil to support a new career. I need more ways of making it, and I'm tempted to go for 100 on Alchemy and pumping gil into Goldsmithing, slowly, over the course of fishing and leveling other jobs.

Anyway, as far as actual actions in the game, I helped Jeston, a career WHM, get the parasite skin drop for his Warrior AF2 last night. It was a fun run through Castle Oztroja, and we only needed to dodge aggro on the third level so it was rather easy. It was funny to think of my crazy solo LB3 run through this place, in mortal fear for most of the final stretch. {Adventure}!

I got a nice comment from a reader named Feon last night as I was fishing in Jugner, and this made my evening a bit brighter. So, thanks!

In fishing news, I've broken into level 27 and have now officially traded over 1000 carps. 1047 to be precise. Only 8953 more to go! {Adventure}!

I was in a brief party tonight which brought me about 1.5k into level 71. So I guess some immediate goals to accomplish will be re-capping Great Axe, which I've let slide for a level again (and I call myself a Warrior... pshh) and breaking the latent on the Axe of Trials for my Steel Cyclone WSNM.

Blowing on Dice

That's what all of my gear swaps feel like after quite a bit of experimentation tonight. The massive numbers from the night before were clearly the result of frequent crits and enhanced accuracy from the COR BRD combination. The best I could do tonight was land 500-600 Rampages more consistently during the last couple of hours of my 5 hour session when I gave up on meddling with accuracy and only swapped in STR on the head, hands, and sometimes the legs (if it seemed like I was connecting adequately with no Life Belt). Anything else would either cause misses during the weapon skill or low enough Atk to essentially negate any STR modifier that might be happening.

I'm already starting to covet that Optical Hat... and I appreciate all of you BRDs and CORs more than ever.

I spent tonight in a largely Japanese party that launched around 9PM and disbanded around 2AM. The setup was initially SMN (the same leader who put together the Bibiki Bay party a few nights ago), RDM, WHM, NIN, WAR, WAR. We camped a bit further north in Caedarva Mire tonight, on the southern end of the alley at J-7. Well, I wouldn't call it a 'camp' exactly since we seemed to roam quite a bit, but we hovered around that area, killing flies and imps and the rare Jnun when we would drift far enough south.

I was fortunate that the fellow Warrior, Steelreserve, was a US player and an acquaintance, so I didn't have to party in complete silence. He was chomping at the bit to get to 70 since he had a Rune Axe and Juggernaut waiting for him.

Since the zone was crowded (as usual), the SMN puller Bubukitty was ambitiously setting up mobs in the queue by sleeping them and/or sicking Titan on them while we killed the current mob. Sometimes she would do this within seconds of pulling the first mob, which surprised me. The Ninja also roamed and pulled imps as he found them. I dinged 70 sometime within the first half hour of the party.

There were deaths, including my own, due to linked imps. Handling these was a bit of a crapshoot since Amnesia can completely destroy hate control in these situations. Sometimes we would come out unscathed, sometimes the NIN would die, sometimes I would die, and the party wiped once.

When we wiped we were around the 2.5 hour mark and the WAR had to get to bed, so we took a breather in Whitegate to refresh supplies and Sanction while the leader found a replacement.

He was a Ninja, US player by the name of Tekmo, who had just picked the game back up about a week ago after a long hiatus. He didn't have the Azouph staging point flagged, so it was a long ship ride for him to Nashmau. The party decided to continue killing mobs with just the 5 of us, and we were still hitting chain 5 somehow (I suspect the SMN was pretty active). I gave Tekmo directions to camp and he joined us shortly after getting off the boat.

The Ninja died once during an Amnesia attack (so excrutiating to watch helplessly), but otherwise the killing continued unabated until the crew got sleepy and disbanded, showing Tekmo to his staging point along the way.

5000 Experience Points until level 71.

When old Warriors get together and have pints

This is what we talk about. I put in my 2 cents on the thread and don't think they need to be re-articulated here, since you all already know I'm a bitter and obstinate old man.

Attack of the Pointy Hats

Hey, I look at a blog title, I get bored, strange things happen...It is, however, germane to the entry so keep reading before doing that little o.O emote in your head m'kay?

After buying some more gear and juggling around with Acc/Atk/STR stats, I put up my flag and went to work on an Excel spreadsheet to dynamically calculate my statistics tradeoffs for WS macros. Yes, I'm that geeky -_-. No, I'm not looking for the 'holy grail' of perfect balance between these three statistics because that would ultimately be futile. There is no gear set compatible with all EXP situations since there are too many intertwining variables that force you to change things on the fly:

• Atk or Accuracy buffs from your job abilities
• Atk or Accuracy buffs from another party member's job abilities (BRD/COR)
• Mob Defense and Evasion
• Mob Job Ability Effects

So what I'm looking for is a quick calculator before I change my gear macros or start manually fiddling with equipment mid-fight. Something that emulates the GUI behavior in game but with the bonus of Attack and Accuracy differentials and the ability to group gear sets.

Hey at least I'm not setting up a database and a quick PHP application to do the job. I'm totally not thinking of doing that. Ahem.

I purchased some Thick Mufflers and Thick Breeches for my Acc/Atk build, and held off on the Sipahi Turban for my STR build until the price dips back below 300k or thereabouts. I might grab it tonight anyway, since the head is really a great gear slot for swapping at the moment: I can add and remove Atk vs. STR without compromising Accuracy, freeing up other slots to give the alternate bonuses.

Anyway enough gear talk. I barely had time to build the pick list and stats on my spreadhseet when I got an invitation to party in Caedarva Mire. I got to the staging point before anyone else did, and the party took a good 30 minutes to form, which gave me additional time to obsess over gear swapping.

The party eventually formed as COR (leader), BRD, WHM, WAR, WAR, NIN. I was the only sub-70 player there and the highest was 72, I believe. I could tell this was shaping up to be a strong TP-burn party and couldn't wait to experiment with my gear. Did I say I was going to stop talking about gear? My bad.

The WAR and NIN both had Optical Hats, which I think are the most unfortunate aesthetic mistakes in the game considering what wonderful pieces of equipment these are. I do plan to own one in the distant future, but for now I was the odd one out... It must admit that it did feel kinda cool to be killing things with Pointy Hat people, although I'll probably get pretty tired of seeing that Scorp Harness + Optical Hat combo after awhile.

The zone was quite crowded but we still found a nice scenic overlook at J-8 which was a short jaunt from several fly and Jnun spawns and nearly on top of an imp spawn. The WHM was self-admittedly not in top form (long workday burnout) but did well enough for us to hit chain 6 a few times.

I and the WHM died due to an epic link of Fly + Fly + Fly + Imp. The WHM ran out of echo drops and was silenced by the Imp, which I futilely tried to tank while the others killed the remaining fly that AOE'd poison all over everybody. We eventually took down all the mobs, but not before the WHM was poisoned to death. Watching my HP quickly go from 70 to 50 to 30, I did a /wave and "/em chokes" before lying down to gaze at the stars for awhile. The BRD quickly returned on her WHM to give us Raise III.

The WHM eventually hit his level 70 EXP cap and hadn't mashed Maat yet, so he brought in a replacement. And this is when things really started to click.

The new WHM didn't miss a beat. There was rarely a moment where I noticed any Silence/Poison/Blind effects lingering on me and I seemed to be Hasted quite frequently. The BRD puller never seemed to run out of mobs. Both the COR and BRD were doing amazing things to my stats, and we were plowing through mobs quite quickly. When the other WAR got a MNK replacement (also wearing a pointy hat), the damage really started... and we hit chain 10 at some point.

My favorite mobs were the Jnun, which had terrible evasion and allowed me to go all out on STR swaps, and therefore just crumpled to Rampage: I eventually hit for 1008 damage with Aggressor+Berserk only, no 2-hr, no Warcry (although the buffs from the COR+BRD probably influenced this quite a bit). The rest of my WS were consistently high unless I missed a gear swap or was overambitious in swapping out accuracy. I started considering 400-500 to be the low end of the WS damage and would occasionally go into the 800-900 range.

I'd never seen numbers this high on my Rampages on EXP mobs before so this was very exciting for me. BRD+ COR + squishy mobs = fun.

But what was even more exciting was the fact that the Ninja was absolutely holding hate. Again, major kudos to the Ninjas who know what they are doing in these types of parties.

I participated in the party for about 3 hours and gained around 20-21k EXP before calling in a MNK replacement. I was 3k away from the big 70, but it was 2 in the morning and I needed to decide between 'tired at work' and 'zombie at work'.

I chose the former.

Maybe Bibiki Bay isn't so bad...

The EXP is definitely slower, but now that most people are choosing the new zones, the competition is thinning out a bit in the southern camps.

I started the night in Al Zahbi, joining 300 or so people in failing our server miserably and losing the Astral Candescence. I put up my flag immediately upon completing the event and got an invite fairly quickly from a largely JP party: SMN, RDM, COR, WAR, WAR, NIN

The initial plan was to go to the Azouph staging point, but since the AC had been taken, this was no longer a good option. So we all opted for Bibiki Bay and went for the southern G-10 camp, targeting the Hobgoblins once again, and avoiding the Blaggers when possible. We then decided to move to a Dhalmel camp ag G-9, performing quite well even when we managed to get 2 adds for one long camelfest. Then another party showed up so we moved yet again into a little nook between G-9 and 10 and targeted both the Dhalmels and Hobgoblin Alastor's when possible.

A rather fun night considering the zone, mostly because I think I decided to be engaged and really try to get the most performance out of my setup: staggering Aggressor and Berserk cycles rather than simply synchonizing them in a macro, gear swapping based on individual mob evasion, more gear swapping during WS based on the particular mob, and timing Rampages appropriately on the camels to get the chains closed before Healing Breeze kicked in.

Another good, productive night.

My only regret was in letting Great Axe slip again during all the fun.

I'm about 11k into level 69 now.

A series of fortunate events

I did some more Jugner fishing while LFG a couple of nights ago and eventually dinged 24, and soon thereafter landed a Mount Zhayolm party around 11PM. It wasn't exactly an epic party, but it lasted long enough to bring me within 1300 of level 69. Since it was a TP-burn and we couldn't get past chain 5 or 6 on the crawlers anyway, I got my Great Axe back up to cap at level 241. Between the RNG and I doing 600-700+ damage on our WS spam, I was amazed at just how well the PLD maintained hate throughout the party. I logged out around 1AM, tired but satisfied... and mighty tempted to go up against Maat and get it over with.

I was fortunate to be able to log in at 5PM yesterday and attend Sannobia and Lilrusso's wedding in Chateau D'Oraguille. The event was cute and touching, although the GMs really should have told the couple that there would be a 15 attendee limit beforehand, as well as warned them about a few of the FFXI wedding rules:

No weapons or hats allowed.
No running. Auto-walk only.
All attendees must be wearing the same pearl.
No emotes (out loud).
No one can enter area before the appointed time.

I think that about covers it. As you can imagine, getting everyone to follow these guidelines, especially when there were close to 40 of us, was a bit like herding cats. Only one person found it appropriate to mess with the rules, refusing to take off his pimp hat (or alternately putting on his halloween hat), shouting, and running... and I believe he was booted from the area. Faulsey, you can probably guess who that person was -_-;

Anyway, I took a few pictures and hope they turn out. I'll post them here and on Flickr as soon as I can. We all had fun with fireworks at the end of it.









Last night was a 'dry' invite night, but I continued to fish for awhile. I was unsuccessful in coaxing a WHM and BRD who were both seeking a party into forming one with me and some assorted melee (we were the only English speakers on... what were they all waiting for, the second coming?).

When that didn't work out and 11:30PM rolled around, I was resolved to make something of this night and felt that it was time. Time to gather my items, set up my macros, read the strategy one more time, and trade my testimony to Maat. Dun dun duuuuuuun!

Here was my gear:

• Colossal Axe
• Bomb Core
• Walkure Mask
• RK Collar
• Spike Earring x 2
• Hauby
• AF Hands
• Venerer Ring
• Woodsman Ring
• Amemet +1
• Life Belt
• RK Breeches
• AF Feet

And my Maat fight prep items:

• Icarus Wing
• Opo-opo necklace
• Stack of Sleeping Potion
• Blink Band
• Meat mithkabob

I equipped the Opo-opo necklace and consumed 11 sleeping potions, bringing my TP to around 240 (I had panicked and eaten one before I even entered the BC, lol). I took the opportunity during the down time to put on some mellow ambient music and finish my pint. Once that was done, I put on my Blink Band and used it, then switched everything to my battle set and popped a meat kabob.

When I got within range to engage, I drew my weapon and cast the Death Warrior sequence: Aggressor, Berserk, Mighty Strikes, Warcry. I did as the guide said and ran at him "screaming like the crazy viking you are at heart" and the following transpired (due to the 2-hour, all hits were crits):

Frohike hits Maat for 233 damage.

Maat misses.

Frohike hits Maat for 236 damage.

Maat eats one of Frohike's shadows.

Frohike readies Raging Rush: 1133 damage

Frohike uses an Icarus Wing

Frohike readies Raging Rush.

Maat eats one of Frohike's shadows.

Maat: "Hmm that was a mighty fine display of sk..."

Frohike hits Maat for 911 damage
Fragmentation: 68

Frohike hits Maat for 191 damage

BCNM over.

Clear time - 8 minutes, 21 seconds

Frohike walks away without a scratch, and promptly has a heart-attack when he realizes he'll never have to worry about another Limit Break ever again.