Ok, so I finally got a win in Dynamis-Valkrum. It started off a little rough but it smoothed out after while. I even got to kill Eji. 
One SMN item dropped here, but that was about it for items of interest. More later.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
More stuff to entertain you.
Friday, December 29, 2006
So what do we have here.
Nothing really constructive to point out but I have a bunch of screenshots, and I can go over them to entertain the masses.
Lets see, I had a really good party with Bgalvin, Borin, Charlet and two other people we picked up. 
Nin, Nin, Nin, Brd, Brd, Rdm. It was great we were getting to Chain 10 on trolls with regularity. Made like 30k xp in this party, which puts me at 7 merits, only two away from capped STR merits. The Rdm was complaining at the beginning of the party that we couldn't do enough damage for Trolls. LOL Yeah, they stopped complaining once we killed a Hilltroll Paladin for Chain 10. Dual Minuet and dual March was awesome <3.
Omoi, Aable, Gordor, Izman, Iceblazek and Thazienne all helped me to try to get a Selene's Bow. For the White Coney (can't say that without giggling like a schoolgirl) it was sleep nuking, while I stood around looking silly. Aable is the man at popping this thing, and I really appreciated everyone staying up late to try to get it for me on the first Full Moon, which didn't drop after about 5 hours of pops. 
So, after that fruitless attempt, we went back at New Moon to fight the Black Coney (more giggling) this was alot easier to deal with, no sleep nuking to avoid Wild Carrot, just a couple of shadows to deal with Whirl Claws.
Pretty quickly after we started popping the Black Coney (yeah, like 6-7 spawns >.<) the Selene's Bow finally dropped and I had the bow I would need for the rest of time on my Ranger. I figure with the Selene's Bow, an O Bow and a Hellfire, I will be completely set on Ranger.
More later.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
I'm not slacking.
I write these things while I am at work, and I am off for Christmas and New Years so... well, I will work on something today for Bgalvin, because he says I am slacking. LOL
Thursday, December 21, 2006
A look at the new armor.
A quick run down on what happened yesterday, I did a little farming for my leathercraft, I would like to get a few more stacks of lizard skins before I start crafting them because there is a big gap and even with support I am going to get some breaks. After that I went and helped Gordor do the Black Coffin mission, which was pretty easy, then we decided merit some and recap XP. We started by going to the Mire, packed, couldn't go to the Thickets because our WHM didn't have the staging point, also the thickets didn't seem to have very many people in it, I wonder if the change to the mob location has killed the Thickets as a place to xp. Then we went to Mt. Zhaylom but it was packed too, like 5 parties there, it was unbelievable, so started looking at old zones, Sky was out because our WHM didn't have that either, so it was off to Kuftal Tunnel. 
I hadn't partied down there since before the expansion. Only one RMT mass-xp party and they left right after we got there. Recapped my XP and got another Merit on NIN. Which was nice as I had lost a good bit of XP on my NIN since the last time I merited.
It was a pretty plain day, so I wanted to focus on the Salvage Rewards. Many people have already been claiming that this new gear makes all other gear obsolete, but these people are just whining because of the work they have done to get the gear they already have, and they are the same people that were claiming before the update came out that SE has no gear progression and they just make them camp for hours at a time. In truth, some of the gear is better than anything else available in the game, but not all of it. Today, I am going to go over the Ares's Mask.
Ares's Mask 
Now, this is a piece that may have no direct competition for outright damage dealing. That being said, lets take a look at the comparable armors.
For all jobs listed on Ares's Gear:
Optical Hat 
Now, for the jobs listed on the Ares's Mask the Optical Hat is pretty soundly overwhelmed. The evasion and ranged accuracy is not important to any of the jobs that can use the Ares set, and the Accuracy is better on the Ares's Mask, but it should be kept in mind that the Optical Hat is a level 70 item and thus has a wider usable range and was already eclipsed by the Walhara Turban in alot of the cases where it would be used as an alternative because PLD, DRK and DRG all have A+ weapons so the Accuracy isn't as important as the haste in most cases (not to me, but whatever).
Walhara Turban 
This was previously the number one head piece because of the focus on haste for many jobs, especially dual wielders. Now of the jobs that can equip Ares's Mask, War will probably be the most conflicted over this choice. 5% is a ton of haste and the Ares's Mask has no haste at all. Obviously for Great Axe users the Ares's Mask will almost definitely be the better choice, but for Dual Wielding WAR's (the large majority) this will be a harder choice, because increased swing speed means increased TP and more WS's were most damage comes from.
For most jobs listed on Ares's Gear:
Ace' Helm 
Now here is a much more complicated decision. For DRG and DRK, this Helm is very nice. It has accuracy, STR and most importantly a decent portion of haste. Of course the accuracy and attack are better on Ares's but what of the loss of haste? And the STR means one less equipment slot switch on WS's while maintaining a good chuck of accuracy. This one is not as clear cut as first thought.
Adaman Celata
Now the Ares's Mask obviously appears to be the HQ version of the Celata, same basic stats just amplified, and the Ares's Mask even has additional HP and MP, instead of lowered HP.
Wyvern Helm 
Now this is a WS only item, and will be dependent on the jobs and the WS that are being used. For few or one hit WS's then the Wyvern Helm is probably the way to go, but for multihit WS's the Ares's Mask is probably better, because the accuracy and attack having a better boost on each hit rather than the adjustment to the one hit.
Homam Zucchetto
Again a more difficult choice depending on the job. Haste and accuracy, with comparable HP and MP gains, how does this compare to the huge amounts of Accuracy and Attack on the Ares's? Does the haste make up for the difference? I would say that Ares's probably gets the nod but with more haste built up, it might take a parser to determine the difference.
Barone Zucchetto 
Not much of a comparison. Ares's is definitively superior.
For DRK's:
Black Sallet 
Again, basically an NQ version of the Ares's, and Ares's does not have the negative effective of taking a substantial increase in damage. The increase in the duration of Absorb spells is almost definitely not enough to make up for the accuracy and attack.
Chaos Burgeonet +1 
Now DRK AF+1 may be a decent alternative for WS gear to the Ares's. It has alot of strength on it, and is at least useful for the enhancement to Souleater, so for DRK WS's this piece is almost definitely better than Ares's gear.
Abyss Burgeonet 
A decent amount of attack, but it does not surpass that of the Ares's Mask, probably not a really competitive piece.
For WAR's:
Unicorn Cap 
Although the Accuracy is nice, the latent is what causes mention for this piece, as it is the rare piece that has accuracy and STR on it for WAR. The latent though make is unreliable as it requires over 70% HP, which is not always a tenable situation.
Thats it, and looking back over this I probably put too many items that don't really compete with the Ares's Mask. In the next post I will do the rest of the Ares's set and try to limit the discussion to only truly competitive pieces.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
2 Post in 1: Salvage: Thoughts, Info, Etc, and Regular Entry.
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
I need to stop reading forums.
God damn it, people are stupid. We have people in some forum posting BEFORE they have been in Salvage proclaiming its suckage and its death. In an attempt to describe it to you, I will go over the basic tenents. If you have determined that it sucks before doing it, stop reading.
1. It take 2000 Assault Points, not IS points. This means that you can not do it everyday, but you shouldn't try to. Its a little longer than Limbus and a lot shorter than Dynamis, it is a good length of time. Not overwhelming but I think that most people should plan on doing it two times per week, and I also think that doing it will massively slow your progression toward Assault gear, so its kind of a trade off, but the very nice thing is determining when you want to go and how many times you want to go. Once a week? Twice a week? I think you could even go three times a week if you work it out correctly and did the right Assaults with three people. You also need to be on at least Aht Urhgan mission 17, which is the visit to the Imperial Whitegate after the Black Coffin. We made sure of that last night. Then you talk to this guy: 
He is standing next to the Assault Office.
2. IT IS NOT EASY. If you are looking for things given to you on a silver platter, its time to head back to Limbus. If you are looking for, you know, SOME FREAKING CHALLENGE IN A GAME, then this is the place to be. If you are going to whine about not having your weapons when you go in then this is not for you. If you like a challenge and have fun trying to figure things out, then this is you place.
3. The rewards are insane, its still to be determined how hard the rewards are to get and what the mobs above the first and second floors drop, but that will come with time. I will post the ultimate rewards at another time, there are too many for one blog entry.
4. Figure out who is going to get what items before going in. The subjob unlocks, magic unlocks, weapon unlocks, etc. Weapon unlocks should go to tanks first, and not to MNK's (orz) so that hate can be spread. Magic to healers first, subjob to monks or tanks for more HP, etc. Think about it, and you will usually want to pile up the first set of unlocks to Tanks, then WHM, then BLM for damage and healing, Once the MNK's have gotten there HP boost and subjobs, they will probably want to wait to get the rest of the items toward the end.
5. Pulling is very important, some mobs drop better stuff than others. If you get a link, just kite it, you can basically kite things on the first two floors forever, because they move so slow. Get the mobs with the better drops first. In Bhaflau Remnants it was the bombs that had better drops, so kill those before killing the crawlers. 
6. What to bring: Reraisers, Reraise Scrolls, Potions, Au Laits and Sneaks and Invisible items. These will help a TON. Now we know why the Assaults drop so many potions, you will drink them like water on the first two floors.
7. Clear the first floor, but be sure to pull the hard mobs last after at least a few people have abilities unlocked. Our run went to hell when we pulled a PLD troll 
because it would just Diamondhide the Cure IV and we just sat there and couldn't do anything, after that we just basically force wiped and moved through the rest of the levels.
8. Don't give up and just move on to the next level, that is what we did, but there were Flans there and we couldn't damage them at all, so we just scattered and explored. You will get some magic and weapon unlocks at some point on the first floor, the important thing is to not rush, and just do your best to kill everything.
On our way around we encountered several different mobs, Archaic Gears 
this freaking huge Archaic Chariot 
and the Mega-boss the Long-Bowed Chariot 
We weren't able to do anything really because we had skipped by too fast, and didn't get any unlocks... I hate that Troll Gemologist >.<
We ended up mostly dead because we tried to play with the Long-Bowed Chariot so we ended up like this. Oh and if everyone dies or leaves the area you will be dumped out in 3 minutes like any BCNM. 
In conclusion, this is not for the weak of heart or mind, or the whiny. If you want a challenge for the best gear in the game this is the way to go. Basically the run I did were some friends, some people from my Limbus LS, and some other random people. We lost focus when we got to the horribly annoying PLD, we should have just kited it and killed something else. We will know better for next time.
One last thought on Salvage. Its basically RMT proof, the drops are Rare/Ex, it takes time and actual coordination, and it can't be hacked (at least not yet) because even if you warp hack you can't kill anything later on, and you have to melee the first couple of mobs. So if you see a group of RMT's all level MNK, you will know what they are up to. LOL But even then its like doing RMT Dynamis, no gurantees on anything, and it will just probably get ugly really quick.
Now for the rest of my day, which was already long before we even tried Salvage, I don't even want to think about the time that I went to bed. orz (ZzzpandazzZ™) Anyway, it started off with helping Vesp get Exuviation from the Wamoura after he had already gotten Magic Hammer off the frogs (which just looks silly) 
These things are nasty and they only "evolve" from the regular Wamoura Princes after a certain amount of time, and I think there can only be so many in a certain area at a time. They like to do a lot of fire based AoE that wipe shadows, but don't hit too hard and we had like 4 BLU's spamming Head Butt, which afforded a ton of time for shadow recasts. Vesp got the spell on the first kill, and we only needed to get 2 more kills to get everyone the spell. Luckily, the Wamouras that we were killing just loved to spam the move.
After getting Vesp his new spell we were off to Limbus. We did the elemental floor, and I should have spoken up more apparently, because they didn't know you needed to kill the elementals in a certain order to prevent the Mystic Avatars from spawning. See, what you need to do is kill the mobs in elemental order because if you kill one elemental, then the elemental that is strong to the one you killed will turn into a Mystic Avatar, which are way more powerful than the elementals and like to use their Two Hours. :( We ended up having to fight Titan and Shiva because of this, if I had spoken up more we should have been able to at least do Ifrit or even Titan, but not both. :) It didn't matter two much because even though we took a few casualties to Diamond Dust, we still beat Shiva and fought Carbuncle and two light Avatars at the end. 
Afterward, I was at 72 Ancient Beastcoins and Vesp let me borrow 3 more to be able to finally get my Brutal Earring! 
I was so happy, but I never got to test it out on my NIN because of the limitations in Salvage. ; ; I would like to XP with it sometime soon, and I have had people bugging me to XP recently, including Bgalvin, Charlet, Eternalpain and Omoi, hey with a RDM thats like an XP party right there! :)
And now for your daily moment of enjoyment, Carby didn't look like he was feeling too good yesterday... his color was a bit off... maybe a few too many drinks in the Avatar Club. 
(™ is Trademark of Aileecorp: Saving bunnies today to bite the fingers of Ringthree tomorrow!)
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Lots and lots of AF.
Another busy RL weekend, but weekends like that are good for doing AF, and I needed to do a lot of AF. Lets start with WAR. Lets see here, I already have my Fighter's Calligae, so we can skip that, so next was Fighter's Mufflers and a talk with good ol' Borghertz 
and then we paid a visit to Dark Spark 
Glacian needed Dark Spark for NIN AF hands too so we were able to knock out two clay pigeons (not birds, for Ailee, although I am sure there would still be some issues with non-human animal amorphism) with one stone. Anyway, the hands are very nice, 
and I will probably use them in places that I have high accuracy, like once we are getting to the end of the level range of mobs in a camp (54+ in Kuftal Tunnel) and I will probably use them for WS's until I get something better for damage like Barbarian Mitts or Spiked Finger Gauntlets. Now that I have the feet and the hands, I have pretty much the two best pieces of AF that I can get for WAR and thats about it. The rest will be for tanking, which I don't think I will be doing that much of, and for completing the set so I can store it so it doesn't take up 5 slots in my Mog house. The next two, the Fighter's Mask 
and the Fighter's cuisses 
were hidden in the Crawler's Nest and Castle Zvahl coffers respectively. Finally, I had to complete my CS with Bastok's Finest 
to receive my Fighter's Lorica 
. After doing all this, we were able to actually level on WAR and BRD a little. And we both managed to get to 52. 
Omoi/Kira has been questing a ton on Kirameki so that she will be able to get the Gobbie Bag, Mog House expansion and AF quests. She already has at least a few of her BRD AF done, but still needs a Zvahl coffer, which I would like to do for her today or tomorrow. Also tomorrow, there is a New Moon, and I want to try to get my Selene's Bow. I have already enlisted the help of Omoi and Ailee, I will probably come as SAM or DRG, because you need to do damage pretty quick to the Black Conney before he AoE's you to death.
Well, after my WAR AF, I also finished the first quest for my RNG AF. Actually the first AF would be the hands, but that involves a Garliage Citadel coffer which I dread. ; ; LOL Anyway, I had to run all over the universe with Shikaree M, including to the Eldieme Necropolis 
then over to Castle Oztroja, then finally back to Windurst to get my Hunter's Beret. 
I will probably be wearing this until I get to level 70 where I will don my Optical Hat. I will be working on the rest of my RNG AF this week, since I have next week off so I can level without fear of having to get new gear when I could be leveling my RNG. The really nice thing is that I was even able to wear my Hunter's Beret this weekend because I had some decent parties and got my RNG to 54. 
It is coming along quickly but I definitely need to come up with some more Gil to pay for all of these arrows and bolts. When I got to level 54, I could tell my Holy Bolts were getting resisted a lot less, and my Acid Bolt's would usually take only two shots at most to land the defense down. I tried out using a Light Staff (speaking of which, I still need to return it to Aable) but I didn't notice that much of a gain in damage really, and only a few less resists, although I did notice that my Ranged Accuracy didn't decrease all that much. I would have stuck with it if it hadn't been for the fact Acid Bolts are Dark Magic based and it basically killed them, they would not proc at all. I guess, I could use it at a higher level, but Acid Bolts are just fantastic for the damage bonus, so it would be hard to give them up, just for a few less resists.
Finally, speaking of AF, we also helped Glacian beat up some Sahagin's to get his NIN AF all finished up. 
Pretty short work of it, and I was only a level 51 WAR. LOL
Sometime during the weekend we were able to get some of Promyvion-Vahzl done for Izman, Ice, Lucella and Azeryus. 
We had already gotten to the first save point, so we extended down to the final level, and now they will just need to farm up some Animas and we will be able to the fight, quick and painless. Then, its onto the three paths, a ton of CS's and the Snoll Czar. >.<
But, before then, here is a list of things that I need to get done.
1. Level DRK to 37.
2. Start leveling my Leathercraft again.
3. Finish getting all of my RNG AF.
And now for your daily enjoyment:
RAWR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, December 15, 2006
Finally, something to talk about, and more nakedness.
Ok, the new information about Salvage is out, and I have some things to say about it, but before that, yesterdays update.
First, it was finally a Full Moon at a convenient time, so I was able to start my RNG AF quest. But first I needed to head to Windurst to talk to Perih Vashai so that I could start the quest. After this Omoi and I were off to Ranguemont Pass where I heard the story of some strange being of darkness... 
that little dude is just freaky, very interesting but didn't have very much to do with the story at all. We ran into Gawayne collecting his Glitteringsand too, so we picked him up and killed a few Weapons until we had two drop then we headed out to Jugner Forest to meet up with Semih Lafihna and had a chance encounter with Shikaree M 
after a short (and a little confusing) confrontation we headed back to Windurst, where I received my Sniping Bow. 
(You can see a sneak peak of my nakedness here too ^.^/) Its not even worth mentioning the stats on the Sniping Bow, it sucks that bad. My level 30 +1 bow is better than this AF weapon, in fact this might actually the be first AF weapon that I throw away because it is so completely useless. I have started the quest for my Hunter's Beret 
but since it is level 54, I wasn't that pressed to get it before heading out to Limbus. It should be mentioned that the Hunter's Beret is something that I will be wearing full time, beside the +5 Ranged Attack, the +3 INT will help my Acid and Bloody Bolts effects land. My level 52 item is just the Hunter's Bracers 
and they pretty much suck too, besides the fact that I currently have WAR AF hands quest open right now, so I have to finish that first.
Now onto Limbus. We did Central Temenos - 1st Floor, which is basically 3 sets of paired mobs. When you kill one mob it makes the next mobs much more difficult, in fact I have heard that the Dragon becomes very difficult because it will spam Dragon moves like Body Slam which can devastate an alliance. So I suggested that we try to kill the mobs very close together in time or make sure to kill the stronger mob first. We ended up trying to kill them near the same time, with very good results. First, we took the ghost and pot pair. Since this was the first time we were doing it we just attacked the ghost and dropped it to 10% then dragged it to the pot. The only problem with this was that the ghost has a decent auto-regen on it, so it got like 10% HP back by the time we got it to the pot. We held the ghost for a moment while taking down the pot to 10% then killed both at about the same time as planned. We changed the strategy up a bit for the Dragon and Ahriman pair. I grabbed the Enhanced Dragon and dragged it to the area just outside of where the Ahriman was, there we took it down to about 10% again. 
Then it was slept and we pulled the Ahriman, at about 10% for both we split the melee and dropped a few Thundagas and they were both dead. We then did the same for the Weapon and Skeleton, pulling the Weapon 
to the Skeleton were we knocked them both down to about 10% then killed them both for a nice and easy and very quick win. 
I got four coins from the run and a SMN AF item also dropped, but of course I had no interest in that. LOL
Well, after Limbus, we decided to head out to XP again. Glacian, Gordor and I, along with a pretty good MNK, RDM and BRD. We were in Kuftal Tunnel, competing against some pretty bad RMT's, and getting 200+ base xp on crabs, it was really good xp and I got to level 52, plus a good chunk toward 53. 
It would be nice to get this group again together today for a nice long XP party, where I could maybe get to 55 and Sidewinder/Slugshot. Now that would make me a happy man.
Now onto Salvage, first the official discription can be found here. This looks to be very interesting. A mix of Limbus and Assault to say the least, and it is instanced so you don't have to worry about people hogging zones. I like the idea of interesting challenges to limit players and force them to, you know, think, about how to beat things rather than just rush through them with a guaranteed win every time. Some people just confuse me, they want things to be easy, but then complain when things become repetitive. People just drive me crazy with this stuff, its the same in the real world, no one knows what they want, they just like to complain endlessly. Don't get me wrong, I do it sometimes too, but it seems no matter how good things are, or how well though out they are, they will never be satisfied, and that is not because they really are dissatisfied, it is because they we are curmudgeons and want to say that everything that isn't exact what they want (easy things to do, easy rewards) just sucks. ANYWAY... I think this is going to be quite impressive. First, there look to be new mobs to fight including new Red Frogs 
some kind of freaking huge hover tank 
and a... Pokemon? 
Now I know that the major complaint will be that there are limitations on people that do that, apparently up to 20 new limitation will be put on players when they enter the zones. 
These "pathos" will make things more interesting for those that actually, you know, enjoy a challenge rather than just through more BLM's at problems. But what do I know, I actually enjoyed the CoP storyline and fights, because they WERE NOT easy, and was actually happy to make it to Sea, rather than getting upset it took so long. The only real criticism I have heard so far is that it needs to have very good rewards, which I completely agree with. Lately we have been handed a few good items and a bunch of replacement gear for stuff that is now basically impossible to get because of RMT or has horrible drop rates. I would much prefer if they just fixed the RMT problem or fixed the game to prevent RMT control of Sky. The only criticism I have of SE is that they think that the RMT problem is something they think they can handle with discipline, but its not, its something that needs to be fixed by changing the game itself, because the RMT aren't going to go away just because you ban them.
We will see the drops, then we will determine the quality of Salvage, but as presented the system seems very intriguing and I can't wait to try it out. :)
And now for your daily moment of enjoyment. If you are going to buy a really good account, and Riverwind is a very good account, then you should at least know how to play it. Yes, that is a Mercurial Kris in the main hand and a Ridill in the off hand. 
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