So, I stayed a little late at work yesterday to watch the bids on Koga Chainmail, because if I left at my normal time I would not be home in time when the bids closed and I didn't want to get sniped. I knew that I would not be able to beat Tohmane's huge amount of points so I was only aiming for second. I wish I could have talked to them about it before hand because there were other people bidding up and to stay second I had to bid past Tohmane to get my bid up then Tohmane would have to bid past me again to become first again. This on the other hand may have worked to my advantage, unintentionally.
So off to Beaucedine we went. I went as SAM/RNG for the first time, just to try it out in Dynamis. I have heard the suggestion that SAM/RNG is good for the city Dynamis runs, but I didn't hear about too many people trying it out in the Outlands, maybe because of lack of accuracy or because of tradition, but they must not have been eating Sushi. My accuracy was surprisingly good even on NM's. Another thing that I found weird was that it seemed my damage got better the further into the run we were. Probably can just chalk that one up to randomness, but I was able to conclude that SAM/RNG is very good for Dynamis. I am going to test out some other set ups, and see how good I can get this, and I dont know if I will bring it to Xarcabard, and definitely not on Dynamis Lord runs (which I haven't gotten to do yet). While I was messing around before the run, I was just testing out my Sidewinders on a few Too Weak mobs around the Trail Markings and this is the highest damage I got. 
I dont know how much damage they are capable but when I got that close to 2k damage I was pretty impressed. I know RNG's can probably do a ton more damage, but it was still nice to see.
Anyway on to Dynamis. We went in and almost immediately had a DRK drop, which is usually an indication of a really good run, with at least a couple AF drops. If we don't get a drop by the time we have cleared the first set of Yagudo NM's then its not going to be a good run for drops. Pretty early into the run a suit of Koga Chainmail dropped and that went to Tohmane. It was nice to see them get it, I generally approve when anyone gets items, especially someone like that because they have worked a long time to get that many points. I also liked the fact that I was next in line ^.^ But I have been second alot and not had a second one drop (hell, I have been first alot, and not seen that first one drop) so I got my hopes up a little but not too much. I didn't need to worry about it for too long though. 
Kill shot on the drop! Now thats calling your shot. :) I wanted to make sure I had extra space before I lotted so I dumped a stack of Demon Arrows. >.< Ouchies. LOL but I wanted to make sure that I was set on space, just a little bit of paranoia there. 
We had cruised through Beaucedine because a couple of people needed the win, so we got near the end and had a ton of time left, which meant that we were going to pull Orc Dyanmis Tombstones. Which was fun because of the mass charmga 
but we didn't end up accomplishing much. After we were done messing around with the Orc's we went and got the win. I immediately went back to the Mog House and switched over to NIN so I could try on my Koga Chainmail. :) 
After that I wanted to show Omoi before she logged so I headed outside to show her, and while I was standing around I saw a friend and said Hi, and it turned out that he was dashing off to try to fight Cerberus. So, I followed along just to see some people fight him, as I had never seen a Gates of Hades go off and its supposed to be pretty devastating. When I showed up it turned out that TeamKanican already had claim and they had two NIN/DRK's tanking it pretty effectively. 
Apparently Cerberus is not very accurate because they were tanking it in Scorpion Harnesses instead of the normal damage reduction gear, and they were doing a mighty find job of it. They didn't have very many people, and the only melee were the two NIN's. Turns out they didn't need much more than that because only a few more BLM's showed up and they took Cerberus down pretty effectively, and I did not see one Gates of Hades go off, which was good for them but bad for me because I just wanted to see the move go off. LOL I didn't see Cerberus try to spam Gates of Hades though either, so maybe it just wasn't inclined to do that today or maybe its because they weren't giving it as much TP or something else. One of the TK BRD's had this which probably helped make things easier on them. 
LOL Yeah, that is mighty impressive. Hard to run out of MP with that much Refresh all the time.
I pretty much went to bed after that, but I am hoping to level RNG with Glacian and Iceblazek today after Sky and Limbus. I would really like to get to 50 soon so that I can start getting AF!
Addendum: Fuzzball sent me an IM this morning reminding me that while I was charmed, he got off a Shadowbind on me, then landed an 1100+ Barrage, but I managed to survive with 6 HP. Sadly, Fuzzball was killed shortly after by a mob of angry charmed players and was not able to finish the job, and I survived to live another day. :)
Thursday, November 30, 2006
A good day in Dynamis.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Pictures for today.
I am posting these again.
Nice to see Ullikummi with a red name for once.
Kiting Ulli.
Killing Ulli.
Medusa before besieged.
And here are my Aht Urhgan mission shots:
Enjoy! :)
Stupid freaking blogger and FINALLY!
I uploaded the pictures for today last night and published the post, but they are not here today. This is freaking ridiculous, I might need to look up another blogger system. And it was an important day to because we freaking finally got an Ullikummi. Took for freaking ever, but we got him. The even funnier part was that it was claimed by Iceblazek who had just arrived into the room and wasn't even in the alliance yet. So he ran it over and was added to the alliance, and we took our first Ullikummi in a while, which was really nice. I had nice pictures of killing Ullikummi and such but blogger fails me. ; ; Well, it was nice to get him. The funny thing is that about 20 minutes before Ulli spawned one group of gilsellers DCed, and the rest of them left the zone. I had hoped that it was because they were banned, or left because of GM calls, but I doubt it because I clearly remember calling the GM while they were mass DCing, and they were back again after a couple of hours camping Ulli again. /sigh. I just wish SE would fucking fix Sky. But that is just pissing into the wind.
Man, without pictures its hard to go over what I did in a day. I did finish the last cutscene in the current set of Aht Urhgan missions. And I have to say that I like the way it is shaping up. Its getting really interesting and it appears that the story might be winding its way through Windurst sometime soon, and Bastok has been mentioned in the storyline but no Bastokan has yet made an appearance which I believe will soon be rectified. I also love these cut scenes because of the character articulation which is far better than anything in the game so far. It is neat seeing them do more normal actions and some of the CS's are even quite funny now because of it.
Anyway, I did some more Assaults last night, and it was pretty fun. It seems that in the first three tiers of the Assaults there is at least one pretty easy Assault for each staging point. I have been doing Mamool Ja staging point "Preemptive Attack" as much as I can and I have over 10K points on that one. Azeryus has over 15k so two more runs for her and she will be able to get the Pahluwan Seraweels. 
They are very nice, and would be my new WS pants on NIN and my TP build pants on DRG depending on the situation, but the Amir Boots are calling to me. 
+6 Accuracy and +5 Attack? That would be excellent for building TP on both SAM and DRG. I am still undecided what I want to do there. I will focus more on a decision there when I am closer. There are two other Assault pieces that I desperately want, which are the Vision Earring: 
Only 3k Assault Points from Periqia, this should be easier than I thought because the level 2 mission Requiem is one of those burn party type missions. Should be able to get this after a week or two of Assaults. The other piece that I want, and definitely more than the Vision Earring is the Precise Belt 
. I just need to find the Warhorse Hoofprint to get to tier 3 to get to the easiest of the Lebros Cavern Assaults, Troll Fugitives. It doesn't look too hard at all, I just need to get the stupid hoofprint. Of course I have seen it before, but now that I need it I never stumble across it.
After I get these items, my SAM/RNG will be pretty much be exactly where I want it to be. Getting 75 and access to Seiryu's Kote made all the difference in my SAM/RNG. I was in Besieged yesterday and had no issue at all hitting the NM's. It was pretty nice to see my Sidewinders landing with consistency. And the damage is so nice, I wonder how I would parse in an XP party now.
I have another Beaucedine run today, for which I am currently second bid on Koga Chainmail 
and the person ahead of me is a very nice person with a ton more points than I have so I don't want to run up the bid on them, but there is a person that has tended to run up the bid sitting idle at four points even though they can't come close to the top bidder or I, they could try to snipe the bids. So I will be keeping my eye on the bids. Even stranger than the greatly desired Koga body is the bidding on Wyrm Mail 
where everyone had bid 4 points and it was basically understood that those that wanted it would just lot it off if it dropped, but some person has bid 10 points on it, which just throws everything off. Oh well, looks like I will be staying at work until 5:30 to watch bidding by snipers and see how the Wyrm Mail situation develops.
Thats it for today, hopefully we will finally get some drops in Beaucedine, its been a LONG while since PLD or NIN has dropped there.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Salvage?
Lets see here, what is Salvage?
From the FFXI website:
In this update, you can look forward to the introduction of a large-scale battle system called "Salvage", access to new areas within the Ruins of Alzadaal, new chocobo raising features, job adjustments, and much, much more!
And from the FFXI Development page:
Along with the introduction of a new battle system "Salvage," the previously restricted access to the Ruins of Alzadaal will be lifted, allowing players free reign to explore the entire region.
Also, several unreachable sections of both the Bhaflau Thickets and the Caedarva Mire will become accessible, and adventurers will be able to encounter the creatures that inhabit those locations.
Here are the suggestions that I have heard so far.
1. "This is just another Assault."
That is obviously not the case because Assaults are described as small scale events. Even if they use the Assault server-style design for this, it will still be much larger, they are explicit in stating that it will be a large scale battle. So, even if they use the Assault server-style design, this will be much larger than anything that is already available for Assault. In truth using the Assault-server system would be much better because it would prevent conflicts with that currently occur over scheduling.
2. "This is like Limbus."
Maybe, but I doubt it. When Limbus was announced it was not described as large-scale, so I think that is out. Limbus is very nice for a couple of reasons. One, its quick, limited time with limited extensions. Two, its rewarding, coins, AF +1 materials, Omega and Ultima drops. On all levels it is something for everyone. Three, its limited in scope, within a couple of weeks people could be fighting Omega, and within a month Ultima. Now, this is the rewards format that we really need. Exclusive, hard to get, but good gear.
3. "This is like Dynamis."
Probably, but I don't know if this is a good or bad idea. First, the three new jobs need Relic gear, that much is plainly obvious. Also, the new jobs don't have a relic weapon they can use. But the question is, how do they balance this with what is already available in Dynamis without screwing up the storyline? They need to have things available for regular jobs or they wont go to help expansion jobs.
This all leads me to one conclusion:
4. This is something completely new.
Shockingly, I haven't heard this suggestion yet. Which is weird because, outside of the CoP Dynamis zones (which are still very different from the older Dynamis zones), the new events that SE has introduced have been very different. Limbus, Assault, Besieged, Dynamis, they are all varied and difference in approach and approachability. So I think this will be something innovative and new.
So bring on Salvage! The sooner the better.
Yesterday was Omega again for Shutupanddance (my Limbus shell). This time we planned on farming for Gunpods from Omega while it was at 5%. Getting to 5% it was a little more difficult that last time, but probably got it down more quickly. NIN/DRK is a great tank for this situation because it is inevitably going to get in a Colossal Blow inevitably at this HP level, and they gain hate back so quickly its amazing. A couple of stuns, a couple of sleeps, a Soul Eater and Last Resort and they are back at the top of the hate list. Even with enmity+ gear, constant vokes and debuffs, I couldn't even get it to look at me unless there was a double hate reset. I was just keeping on the hate list so that if things went bad I would be able to try to get hate pretty quickly, while being ready to claim the Gunpods.
I tried to stay disengaged once we got to 5% because I wanted to be able to claim, but I thought it would be easier to just switch off if I was engaged because I could just switch target to the only other targetable mob and then voke it. Well, we got four gunpods to spawn, probably two more than would have spawned if we killed it straight up. That netted 21 coins, another charcoal chip and an adaman ore. I like the idea of farming it for gunpods, I just wish they would spawn more often.After Limbus, there was a level 6 Besieged by the Mamool Ja. Pretty fun, but I went as SAM/THF and fought the THF NM. orz I couldn't hit it at all. So we had to call in some BLM's to take it down faster. After that we headed to the second NM, but it was only down to about 90% when they retreated. I would really like to take down some of these new Beastman Kings, but we keep winning too early for that to happen.
After Besieged, I helped Solidsnake finish up some of the Aht Urhgan missions. We were only going to do the Fomor NM at the gravestone but ended up doing the Black Coffin too. That fight is so easy its a joke. And its like the tenth time I have done it now. I need more missions, and a dash of Salvage would be nice too. :)
I love this shot, it just looks really cool when you start Limbus.
Yeah, so I did a little bit of leveling over the break.
Ok, lets do this in numerical order. First would be BLM. Ailee and I started leveling SMN and BLM, with Omoi powerleveling us. It was pretty silly, we were just taking on IT mobs while Omoi healed us and took hate. It was just like randomly gaining XP for doing nothing. LOL This was a scene that happened rather often: 
Ailee and I resting for MP, while Omoi is being bound by the nasty little worms. It was fun, and I still managed to die two times. LOL Ailee leveled twice before I even leveled once. Ailee went to bed but Omoi and I stayed up until I got 18. 
So that will be set for my sub for WHM for quite some time. Speaking of which... my WHM is now level 20. For some reason I tend to level my WHM early in the morning. I was just slowly soloing EP mobs in Konschtat Highlands, Banish actually doing some rather nice damage to EP mobs, when I got a invite from a fellow that didn't really understand that you dont just randomly invite people, and that you dont invite people when there is no one else looking, and just waste the time of the other people in the party. Well, I was willing but he never got more than 3 people in the party so I wasn't too worried about it and never left the Highlands, and just put my flag back up. Eventually, I was invited to a decent party where I finally got to level 20 on WHM. 
I had to go to Dynamis-Valkurm, like partying there wasn't hard enough, so I left shortly after getting my level.
I can only take so much magery, so onto the other jobs. At the beginning of my holiday my RNG was only level 37 and just barely so, by the end I was 41. I did make it to 42 seen here: 
but while I was tired and trying to level my Marksmanship I took on something a little to tough for me and lost my level, and even though I managed to get a raise it wasn't enough to get me back up to 42. Oh well, I still need to level my Marksmanship so I will easily be able to get it back before Limbus tonight. I am level RNG with a semi-loose static including Glacian, Omoi, Azeryus, Elfaria and Gordor. Gordor is a good bit in front of us so we will need to catch up with him if we want to level with him, but he seems to really like his SMN so I dont know if we will be able to keep up with him. I am really liking RNG right now and its not as expensive as alot of people make it out to be. I am a little interested in leveling my Woodworking to be able to supply myself with arrows. We will see though.
Now my last job that I leveled this weekend. 
FINALLY! Hehe, now I can wear my Seiryu's Kote for SAM/RNG. I got this in a nice little burn party last week. Apparently, it was in Chilicheese's first party back from leaving for a while for WoW. That dude, has some nice gear for his WAR and Taru's look so cute swinging a Ridill. I was SAM/RNG in this party, and I was still struggling a little bit with Sidewinder, 150TP is what I usually shot most of them at but I would say that I had a 60% hit rate with it. But this was with uncapped Archery, no merits and no Seiryu's Kote. I think it should get substantially better the next time I level it.
I also had a nice xp party on trolls where I got something like 8 total unused merits, that I will be saving again for another STR merit. While I was in that trolls party, I got this Jin. 
Yeah, thats on a troll. Not a Puk or Jnun. I was pretty impressed with that. Didn't even think you could break 1k on a troll. Anyway, I basically just need 10 more merits to get full STR merits. Then I will be putting some merits into weapons finally, and some SAM end-game merits. Speaking of which I got an Onimaru for my SAM this weekend, it is actually pretty nice for when I am not using my Soboro. It is probably the second best Great Katana to the Hagun, and since I still dont have a Hagun and I am not going to get one any time soon, its a nice little replacement.
Lets see, what else did I do over the break? Well, I got to try the Ashu Talif Assault again. 
These mobs are not that hard, they just swarm you and then the Imp's slaughter you with AM's. I think our strategy is getting more refined, and I understand the fight a little better. Its not very hard you just have to be careful of getting overwhelmed. The Imp's have to die first, then the rest of the crew is nothing much to worry about. 
We got closer than last time, I think some more AoE damage would really help us out. A BLM and a PLD helped us to get even farther than we did last time. I think I might go as SAM/RNG next time because Sidewinder or Barrage would essentially be a one-shot kill on these mobs. Too bad we had the same result on our third try. 
I have also started to go to the new Dynamis areas and have done all three starter areas in the past few days. Qufim we lost, pretty badly, because someone forgot to check for a ???, and that ended up hurting us pretty badly and we weren't able to even kill all of the NM's that you need to kill to make the boss weaker. We also lost a Valkurm run because of mistakes and some bad luck. 
The pulls for the Nightmare Flies to unlock sub-jobs took longer than it should but we got it done and headed to the Faerie Ring. This is were a MNK made a big mistake. The pull was a rather long and difficult one, and the MNK apparently doesn't understand that hate from Provoke dissapates over time. Basically, the Faerie Ring took a bad pathing route to the main tank, and while it was taking its time over to the PLD, the MNK Chi-blasted it. This drew it over to the main group of players, were it did its directional breath move that does about 1k damage and a absolutely HUGE poison effect, essentially MPKing the alliance. Even with all of that we managed to kill it and but we lost some time to get people up and ready again. My general feeling is that when you make a mistake, just fess up to it, especially one that you didn't expect to happen. But instead of doing that the MNK claimed that a) he couldn't have pulled it off with a Chi-blast and b) it was a bad pull. Sadly, he was wrong, on both counts. Oh well, its not like anyone ever wants to take the blame for anything going wrong anymore. After Faerie Ring we headed to the other side of the zone to fight the Goobbue to weaken the boss again. On the way someone managed to aggro one of the huge Manticores, and you have to wonder how, because they are huge. Tonnberry indicated some displeasure, rightfully so I believe, with this person for not paying attention. We killed some Qaudav's to get to it, but had a bad pull on the Goobbue and almost caused a wipe but we killed it, though with not enough time for the win it looked like, but we tried. So we headed back to Selbina gate, and fought the Marlboro boss there, getting it to around a little above 50% in the 30 seconds that were left. It was rather impressive and given another minute would have been a win for sure. It was very fun and I will definitely try it again.
I also tried Dynamis-Buburimu with much better results. 
This one was much easier it seemed and we didn't have to go anywhere really before we got the win. It was three different dragons, Tarasca 
Stollenwurm 
and Aitvaras 
These dragons had a bunch of HP, and slowed to spam their AoE moves, but we took them with surprisingly little issue, especially considering that it was the day before Thanksgiving and we had a rather limited run. After the dragon there was a pull for an NM Quadav. 
After all of them were dead, we pulled the boss. 
Nasty looking dragon, but not to bad to kill. A few deaths and a little bit of recovery and we were off to start farming. And a great farming run it was. We got RDM and PLD -1 pieces, and WAR, RDM and DRK accessories. It was again really fun and much faster than a regular dynamis. I wouldn't mind these new dynamis so much if we didn't have to do SO MUCH running around just to get the win to start farming. The old dynamis are much better designed because you are able to beat the objectives while you are farming the zone.
Those are the main storylines of the break, but here are some other tid bits. 
I got another CS in the Aht Urhgan storyline. This one was not as exciting as some of the ones in the past and Shantoto appears to be a bit unstable but I believe intentionally so. I am still very interested in this story but it is much more winding and less direct than the other two storylines.
Yesterday there were two back to back level 6 Besieged, Trolls then Undead. The trolls were surpisingly nasty and the Undead were a little weaker than I remember. I think they have changed the Assault Bhoots so that they do not just spam their AoE HP drain. I think I only saw it one time. It was neat to see Medussa 
and we got her down to 40% before she warped out. Apparently, she can be defeated, and you get an XP and IS bonus for doing so. I think that is now a server wide goal, becauase she seemed a bit weaker than the other two bosses.
Finally, I did some sub-crafting for Omoikitte. I got my Clothcraft to 32 while breaking many of Omoi's sheeps wool as I was trying to turn it into wool for her. 
Gonna take a peek at Woodworking today to see how much I can level it and if I can make my own arrows.
Thats it for today. I have another Omega tonight which apparently we are going to farm for Gun Pods for chips and coins, because we beat it in just about 10 minutes last time. I am getting really close to my Brutal Earring, and then its Omoi's turn and she said she wants to upgrade her DRG AF first, so that should be neat to see.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Giant Freaking Robot.
On a technical note I am going to start using the Pictures post as the post for the next day so that I do not lose the comments made before. So the time/date stamp is going to get all screwy, but I dont think anyone notices that anyway. Now, on to the show.
Lets see where to start. Ahh yes, my new computer finally has a DVD drive... don't ask. So I was able to install FFXI in all its gloriousness on my new computer. It runs at a very high resolution without any delay. And its making me pretty happy. So that took up most of my time before Limbus. I think I will go over what happened today then talk about the pictures that I couldn't post because of blogger from the weekend. So it was time for Proto-Omega. I had just joined this LS, but it seems that they had 12 members for a while, and were trying to keep it small but just didn't have the people to take on the bosses, so they recruited, and they are up to 17 now, I believe. I highly doubt they are going to go over 18 and would still like to try to keep it as small as possible. Basically, they already have like 5 Proto-Omega sets ready to go, and I probably wont get to lot for a while, but I dont care. Its fun and a good challenge, and I will get my turn soon enough, and it looks like we will be doing all 5 Omegas in the coming weeks. Anyway, onto the fight. We all build TP for Spirits Within and buffed up getting ready to go into the fight. 
I have believed for a while that Limbus was not an original conception, but was actually a bastardization of parts of the CoP storyline that were never implimented. Remember that the .dat's before Limbus were named Lower Promyvion and Ou'Phat Obelisk before they were switched to the Limbus areas of Temenos and Apollyon. There is a reference in a late cutscene in CoP to the Ou'Phat Obelisk that Nag'lomada makes when referencing the stasis of the Dawn Maiden. I believe that the CoP storyline was actually longer than what was delivered but was shortened because it was already incredibly long and very difficult. Well, that is my speculation and speculation is one of the best parts of the game. ^.^
Anyway, we headed in to face Proto-Omega 
We were using two NIN/DRK as the main tanks, and I got to be Gunpod voker. :/ Oh well, I was also supposed to try to pull hate when the tanks got hit with Pile Pitch or Colossal Blow, both Throat Stab like moves (90% HP reduction and hate reset). Lesson learned, I can't just pick up hate from the BLM's after a hate reset on the tanks. I need to be building hate over the entire course of the fight. Well, here is Omega standing up, he was like this most of the fight. 
He looks perfect like this, and its neat to think that he was originally designed this way but never implemented until Limbus. I wonder how they would have used him in the original storyline. My guess is that it was supposed to be part of the post CoP storyline like Bahamut and Apoclypse Nigh, but was too ambitious and the game was in need of something like Limbus a cross between Dynamis and Assault. When Omega was on all fours 
it was more annoying for some reason and of course at 20% it just started spamming hate resets but it was just quickly nuked to death. It took just over 10 minutes to kill. 
Bgalvin was totally right, this thing is pretty darn easy. Which is funny because the better gear comes from Omega, the mage gear from Ultima, from what the mages that I know have told me, is not that great. Kitsume said that because it was so easy we will now be farming the gunpods and just basically hold Omega at the HP level where it spans them. I mean from the three that spawned last night we got a Rainbow Thread, 6 coins and a Smokey Chip. Just a few more of those and we could be Omega even more often.
Ok, off to an early lunch, back to finish up later.
Ok, back.
After the fight I got a new title I have been wanting to get for a while. 
From what Bgalvin has said Ultima is far more difficult than Omega so I shouldn't expect this same level of ease with that. Maybe the indication that there is a large difference in difficulty is that you only get 30 minutes for Omega but 60 minutes for Ultima. And then their is Citadel Buster... o.o; Anyway, here were our drops: 
The Omega's Eye makes the Homam Zucchetto and the Omega's Tail makes the Homam Gambieras, they were quickly handed out by the leadership and we were done for the night.
After Limbus, Bg wanted to get some XP on his PLD so we got together and headed to the Thickets. There weren't many people out there so we were able to get some decent XP. We stayed on until people were getting tired but I managed to get this: 
I am saving up for another STR merit. That will be level 4 STR, and after that I am going to go with more merit abilities for different jobs. That was my day, pretty fun and enjoyable over all.
Now to what happened this weekend. Well lets start with Omoi, as she got level 70 on DRG 
and is now borrowing all of the gear that she originally got for me on DRG. She is starting to look like me on DRG. XD Everything else I have pretty much covered except for the following, and you can have fun with it as you please. 
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
Teabags and KY Jelly
The Bloggaru!
