While the cat is away the mice will play.

Had a very busy weekend. If you hadn't noticed the Astral Candescence had been gone for a couple of days up until Friday. And you might have noticed that it was returned pretty late on Friday night (about 2AM EST). And you might have noticed that I was one of the ones that got it back. Oh, you didn't? Well I did.

Standing around waiting for a party on my Sam, I saw a JP shout about the AC and they needed a tank. So I asked, and they accepted. I got on my Nin, and got to test out my new Seiryu's Kote.

The fight is pretty interesting actually, because you have to beat all three mobs in one run, if you dont, any dead ones are respawned and all are reset to 33% HP. For the Mamool Ja, you have to fight a thief, ninja and black mage. We started with two parties, it made getting to the area pretty easy. All of the people were JP except for one other Whm in the other party, who wasn't that great and couldn't really understand the strategy. They went in first and lost, then we went in for our first try. Our party was Nin (me), Sam, Whm, Rdm, Blm, Blm. The Rdm was dualing wielding a Joy Toy and a Kraken Club. He did a ton of damage.^^ Anyway, the Sam and I were to take the Thf first, then the Nin, then finally the Blm. The first time, the Sam and I took down the Thf, and got the Nin pretty far down before it Mijin Gakure'd, but it was too close to our Whm. So we wiped and then got ready to fight again, but the blm got off a Thundaga III and then the Nin just destroyed me. We didn't get a chance to fight them again before time ran out.

The second team went again and failed pretty bad, so we got another go. This time the Sam and I destroyed the thf:


After that we took down the nin, who did MG but everyone survived. The Ninja did get me with a 1200 Firespit right before the Sam finished it off. The mages then started kiting the Blm Mamool Ja, for a while. I rested during this time, got up, started fighting again and almost immidiately took another 1100 Firespit, through a fresh set of shadows. >.< We wiped after that, got up, then just murdered the Blm.

We then saw this text roll by:


That was one of the most fun things I have ever done in the game. And to do it with all JP's was great because it showed that the barriers between NA/EU/JP players are all self-imposed and only prevent people from achieving mutual goals. Togther we got this sweet title:


Victory shot:


I went to sleep shortly after that. I slept pretty darn well.

The next day I had told Illyana that we were going to get him level 75. So I grabbed him, Dianara and some random other people and we headed out to fight some trolls. We did this for a while until people had to go and we had to get some dinner. After that we headed out to the thickets and beat up some Mamool Ja until we finally saw this:


I was really happy for Illy, but I am glad I made him go, I shudder to think how long it would have taken him to get to 75 if left to his own devices. It was getting late for Illy and Dia so Illy got a nice little buffer, then went to bed. I had gotten 4 more merits that day, for a total of nine. I didn't really have a pressing need to put them into anything, and I needed to spend them or I was going to start losing limit points. So I dumped all nine of them into STR which is now level 2. Its like always having a HQ level 14 STR ring on... which when said that way doesn't really sound very impressive at all. >.<

Anyway, after that I decided that I was going to get at least to level 69 on Sam. I had already had one party on Sam earlier on Friday before going to get the AC back. So I got a party together (shocking of course that I did not wait for an invite), killed some Eruca in Mt. Z. It was Thazienne and Weeman and a few others, it was sweet xp until someone hit 69, where it turned into just pretty good xp.

Sunday, I got a short party before sky. Then headed to sky. It was a pretty normal Sky run. Ulli died before we got a chance to camp him, but we got Faust and Zip. We spawned a Genbu and a Suzaku. The Genbu drops weren't very good, no money drops, no big abjurations. Suzaku on the other hand...

I got these by default because noone could lot them besides me and everyone was yelling at me to take them rather then letting them go to someone that didn't even have a job that could use them:


But that wasn't the best part, the fact that one of these dropped off of Suzaku just topped it off:


We have made a bunch of money while Omoi was gone... the only thing we haven't done is get Ullikummi. Which makes me incredibly angry. Anyway...

After sky, I got a GREAT all JP xp party together for my Sam. It was Nin, War, War, Brd, Rdm, Sam. We were all set to go to the Mire as there were only 22 people in the area, and there was a great camp open where we could pull only Imps. But as with all things, it was too good to be true. Before we even left the city, the Nin DC'ed. As it turns out, this may have been because the nin doesn't like fighting Imps. Anyway, I asked the wars if they minded dual tanking, and they agreed. We picked up a whm, and started taking down Imps for something like 250 xp BASE. We were getting chain 5 for 400+ without an xp ring. It was amazing. Too amazing, after the third chain, one of the wars DC'ed and didn't come back. So we sat around for a while, but we got absolutely no response from anyone, even people that were LFG. There will be a HUGE rant about going AFK while LFG some day, some day soon.

After that we returned to Whitegate because the Mire was PACKED and we were going to disband. But I was not so easily disuaded from getting 70. So took a minute, found another Nin, then picked up some of the people from the failed Mire party, including the War that didn't DC and the Whm. Got a Blm and a new Rdm and we were off to fight Ziz in Mamook. This was nice until the Rdm and Nin had to go. It was getting late for me, but I was determined as we headed back to Whitegate. I knew it was late for me, but very early for the JP's so I looked for replacements and picked up some of my Hachiman gear. So we got a new Nin (a rather slow yet arrogent one, who the JP's and I had a bit of fun mocking before he arrived) and the Rdm from the original party in the Mire (w), and headed back out to Mamook.


\(^.^)/

Anyway, while we were there I told the people on vent about Zizzy Zillah who was up where we were, which they took down but didn't get any drops besides some crystals.

And that was my weekend. I did get level 70 before Omoi got back, which was really cool. Now I can show off my neat new Hachiman gear.

Trying to get some Rutter Sabaton tonight, that would be so nice because it would lock up my free for Sam and Nin. There is an apropos Fight Club line about a couch that could go here, but I have forgotten it.