The winding path.

Some days, you have everything lined up and know exactly what you are going to do, some days you kinda do nothing but run around and poke people. And some days, there are just strings of events that chain together to make a rather cohesive whole.

I started yesterday by leveling my DRK some more. Again no invites, but at this rate chaining tough's to 4 and getting 260+ plus per kill with Omoi powerleveling me, I dont really see why I need a party. I do need to update my crappy gear but I think I will do that when I get to 20 or 21 when reasonable gear is finally available. I am trying to level this on the cheap, because I wont be leveling DRK again for a LONG while. Once I get to level 20, I will also more readily look to make a party for my DRK, but I just would like to get this pain over with as soon as possible. It funny really, I never took the time to look out for what mobs are what level, but Jugner Forest is really rocking right now for good xp, I dont know why people dont go there instead of the dunes to fight crabs. Truthfully, crabs may not hurt much but I would rather fight something that is going to die within the hour rather than something I can fall asleep while killing.

Anyway, after that I changed over to SAM and headed to Qufim for Dynamis. On the way, I had sent Geddoe a tell about something, I can't even remember what, but in response he asked me to pull this Dynamis. o.o; I had never pulled a Dynamis before, not a main city or a CoP one. So I was kind of shocked that he would ask me, but I, of course, agreed to do it. So I sped up switching gear and getting to the Hieroglyphics, and Johyo started telling me about the pulls. Glacian said that the pulls for a CoP run and a regular run are different, I guess he means that you have to pull more specific things in CoP and worry more about links and such in a regular run. Before the run Johyo showed me around and told me where all the pulls were, after that we headed in. I thought I did pretty well on the pulls overall. I only linked one statue that Johyo said I shouldn't worry about before the run. After a few pulls and some kiting we were ready to fight the first NM of the zone which was a nasty Kraken located at the BST flag quest point. It was a little bit nasty, and a few people died but it wasn't too bad. We then moved up to the north and killed snolls and rocs until we were in the cave to Behemoth's Dominion. Geddoe and I then had to pull the largerst golem I have ever seen in the game. LOL It's way bigger than even Ullikummi. This was supposed to be a potential sac pull because there are snolls usually in the way, but they were far off and didn't link at all. We took down the golem with barely any deaths at all, which is supposed to be very difficult. At this point we were ready to pull the boss. Again, it this was a little harrowing, as whenever a Grand Slam went off it took everyone down to half health, but with a little chain stunning we were successful. There were supposed to be three SAM-solo darkness skillchains but that didn't end up happening because everyone was just spamming WS. >.< Well, it ended up working anyway and we had beaten the boss of Qufim. At this point, Geddoe took over pulling for the rest of the run because we were just farming. Sadly, we only got one relic drop, a PLD legs -1, which are very nice, but the reward to cost ratio for these new zones are pretty bad. I now have a nifty new title and I believe that I now have access to every single zone in the game. Which is kinda cool if you think about it, there is no area for while I can not access in the entire game. Anyway, enough with the musing, as I had promised Tolbi that he would make the blog today for waiting around after the run to D2 everyone. In fact, thanks to all of our WHM's and BLM's that stay around to raise and D2 people after every run. It's really cool, thank you. :) Tobli, a real Canadian Hero!

After Dynamis, I wanted to help Illius to finish up his Aht Urhgan missions, so we grabbed Izman and Thaz and headed out to the Mire to fight the Fomor for the gold coin to get on the Black Coffin. It was going very smoothly... until... Poor Iz, he dies so much for everyone else, and does it with a smile. Well, after a quick raise we were off to the Black Coffin, where we got the win, but right at the end Illius was killed and sent to Nashmau while everyone else was stuck in the Reef after winning the Black Coffin, because we had already won the fight. Luckily Illius managed to get a Raise 3, which is much better than what he was going to get from Izman's PLD. Well, to make up for the lost xp from the wandering and the Black Coffin, we headed to the Mire. No one was around, it was wonderful. With the new Bhaflau Thickets area open and "uber" burn parties heading up there, the Mire was almost empty and we managed to get three very nice chains before people needed to head off. We ended on a chain 31 with no end in sight. People are so funny about xp, when they want it they will demand that they only get 1337 xp, 20k+ per hour ONRY! But they will stand around for hours hoping to get that awesome xp party, instead of taking one that would "only" get 10-15K an hour. Man, I remember when if you hit 6k an hour, you had an awesome party, and no one would disband from that, when a PLD didn't get a bad label, and when NIN, WAR and MNK weren't the only jobs you could xp with... It's kinda sad really the way people act, but they act like that in the real world too, they just don't do it to your face, because they can't hide behind the internet.

On to a more sunny subject, here is Gawayne's Excalibur. Pretty freaking sexy if you ask me. I didn't get to see it in action because he was away until Dynamis, and I was in Qufim while he was in San d'Oria. I am going to ask him to put on a demo for me sometime so I can get some screen shots of the damage and the weaponskill.