20238 Files Remaining

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

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

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

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!

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

/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

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

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?

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

Katella of ... Ifrit?!

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!

Unexpected accomplishments, and a fond farewell

During my week-long vacation with the parents and my brother, I was able to clock in a few more FFXI hours than usual (we had quite a bit of down time because my parents are a bit... slow to get going). I finally managed to cap my Great Axe skill during a Periquia Assault session with Feon & Cozmos & the gang. I'm still working on unlocking that pesky latent on the Rampager, though.

I also got quite a bit of fishing done, because I was automatically resuming my "limited FFXI time" activities without realizing it (old habits die hard, even on vacation). Cone Calamary skilled me up more quickly than I'd anticipated, and I climbed a couple of skill levels while targeting the money fish (bluetail, nobles), up to 35.

During one of my trips back to Whitegate, I overheard a fellow San D'Orian shouting for a Mission 7-2 party, and of course I joined up while I had the chance. It was a pretty easy fight even with our group of 4.

After ranking up and earning a nice 60k, we picked up a couple more players for Mission 8-1, which was also a pretty straightforward fight especially since we intentionally let Valor despawn before we defeated Honor. We would have gone on to complete 8-2, but needed to wait until 12AM JP time the next day to launch, and I wasn't on the next day. I'm sure the opportunity will come up again later.

On a sad note, my good friend Lexxi is preparing to leave the game at the end of the month and has been selling off her equipment over the course of the past few weeks. As I told her on our LS community board, I'll miss her terribly but will be happy to know that she's finding enjoyment and peace outside of the game. I'm certain our avatars will meet again in another virtual world someday. In the meantime, we'll be lurking each other's blogs ;P.

She needed to get her taru mule from Windy to Jeuno to speed up sales a bit (rather than sending stuff constantly to her main and sitting in Jeuno). So I accompanied her through the Canyon and Sauromugue, chatting the whole time and forgetting to invis her (der):

That mule is the cutest Taru I've ever seen, by the way. Pity she didn't level it more ^_^.

My most recent session was comprised of a relatively quick Sabotender Bailarina camp with Feon and the gang, for Ninjax's Dune Boots.

After this was completed, we made another attempt at the Elvaan for ZM 14 (the last one for Ishmael and me), but were again unsuccessful. Yes, my kiting still sucks, and I still hate that Elvaan with a passion.

Today's Idle Thought on Idle Thoughts

I'm wondering if I'm aberrant in doing this, but since FFXI fills much of my leisure time, I often catch myself daydreaming about certain aspects of the game. This usually happens during down time at work, or browsing the FFXIclopedia during the few moments when the kids are entertaining themselves.

Maybe daydreaming isn't the right word, but something more along the lines of a mental "login"?

It's hard to describe, but it strikes me that I still do this after four years of playing.

My sessions currently consist of:

• 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?

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.