WARNING, WARNING, WARNING! AILEE UNFRIENDLY POST TITLE: Meat... for the love of god MEAT!

I was away this weekend, just traveling and drinking as much as I could between dealing with the reoccurring RL physical troubles I have been having. Anyway, traveling led me to not being on much at all this weekend, but the time I was on was very productive. When I did get home Versus was finishing up some missions for people that didn't have access to the Grand Palace yet. We completed that rather quickly, then headed to farm for some HQ organs for Ix'MNK. We only had to farm for two rooms to get the HQ Aern organ to drop and in that time we killed Ghrah's and managed to get two chips. It was really nice to be able to get them, but kind of orz on my already full gobbie bag. We headed to check the ??? on the left side because that is where it is usually up, because most people don't bother going to the left side if the right side isn't up. LOL Luckily it was there but we had to leave Hellzfury at the gate because he didn't have access yet, something I am apparently rectifying after Limbus tonight, for Pb and Illius as well. Shouldn't take too long if everyone pays attention. :) Well, we popped Ix'MNK and took him over to the kiting room in the West Tower (Mithra, I believe), and after building some hate and sorting out the mages, the kite was on. Didn't take very long, and since this was the first time kiting it (only one tank and no WHM at the time) I know it can get shorter. I did notice some things to make this fight easier, like it is not worth getting shadows up with a full defense/dmg- gear on, because in the time it takes for me to cast shadows Ix'MNK has already caught up to me and has taken my shadows. If I just voke every 30 seconds I can keep hate from decent nukes and generally avoid being hit if I voke right after a corner. When we have fought Ix'MNK before it was just straight up with no kiting, so this was kind of new and fun to test.
Anyway, we got a Deed from Ix'MNK, but Elf got so excited when the drop happened that they thought it was the Cape. LOL Poor Elfie. :)

After Sea, I grabbed Gordor, Ice and Izman for more meriting and leveling, but this time I was going to approach things a little differently. I was planning on trying meat, so I picked up a stack of really cheap Coeurl Subs:

* MP +10
* Strength +5
* Agility +1
* Intelligence -2
* HP Regeneration While Healing +1
* Resist Stun
* Resist Sleep
* Attack +20% (Cap: 75@375 Base Attack)
* Ranged Attack +20% (Cap: 75@375 Base Ranged Attack)

I thought that a 95% Ranged Accuracy would be enough to support meat, but I was still going to have some problems with accuracy like any melee would, when using meat over sushi. I was completely wrong. I was totally able to keep 95% Ranged Accuracy and eat the subs, and boy did my damage go way up. Also, it had been appearing that I was parsing a little low for the area I was in against the other people in the party, but it turns out the parsers that Ice is using is not that great at picking up ranged attacks, so I will blame my low parses on that. :) Anyway, I can't believe how effective using meat can be on RNG, my damage went up massively, including Crits for over 200 dmg, and I didn't take a hit at all in my accuracy. I think it may be time to start subbing in more STR gear for regular TP build. Why didn't anyone tell me that RNG's were this accurate? LOL I am going to take a peak at Red Curry, but it is horribly expensive to be using for an XP party. Well, I need to test out other kinds of meat dishes so that I can use them whenever is most appropriate, but at this point it will be meat-only on RNG from now on, there is no condition under which I believe that I will ever need more accuracy again, especially considering the amount of accuracy gear to which I already have access. Anyway, this party was really good, considering the party set up was "only" NIN, WAR, THF, RNG, RDM, WHM. Oh noes! No BRD! Well, even without a BRD we got this with competition in the Mire: And Kylara was our WHM at level 68 and was keeping up just fine with everyone else. In fact, she got to level 69 just one mob before I got to level 74. With level 74, I got to put on my sexy new Scout's Socks, which will definitely be a bump up in damage with almost nothing lost as I was using Hunter's Socks before that. I must say that my RNG is definitely moving in the right direction and it even looks like the price of E Bow's are coming down with it being placed in the new BCNM. I would LOVE to pick one of those up, but my goal is to get to 75 first then focus on filling the gaps, as some of those still exist, quite clearly with the use of an Archer's Knife being the most glaring issue. I have some thoughts for that slot, all of which are pretty expensive, but doable. Here is my current TP build for RNG since leveling last night:
My final thoughts for today are about the meaning of TH3, and what SE meant by the fact that they were going to increase the drop rate on items soon. Well, in the aforementioned Beaucidine run we not only had a lot of AF drops but quite a few coin drops, I mean on par with city runs. That is a lot of coins to be getting out of an outlands run, and not only that but it was not uncommon to see 3 or 4 coins dropping from a single mob. We did fight more Hydra's and they did have a good drop rate but it felt like something was different and the moon was not in cycle for a good drop run. I had two thoughts on this. One, that the amount of TH3 in the game has massively increased with the new way to easily get a Thief Knife, and being that they are now relatively inexpensive. Two, that SE just increased the drop rate on items since the last update. I don't know which yet, but I will be closely observing how the next couple of Outlands run do on the coin and AF front.

On a sidenote: Chocobo Racing on Wednesday, and I am off to read more on Salvage and Nyzul Isle.

I would also like to mention something about Aable. I didn't know if it was my place to talk about it here, but he has made it obvious that it would be ok. ^.^ So, I wish and I hope that everyone wishes Aable a speedy recovery from his maladies, as he was admitted to the hospital last week for complications from colitis. Get better man, we miss you, and just post anything here that you want me to post for people and you will get it posted first thing. Aable mentioned that he likes food, and loves making food, and that his greatest wish would be for the Food Network to have a show dedicated to cooking for people with CUC (can't remember what that stands for now). So, send out e-mails and letter and whatever is necessary to the Food Network to help Aable out. :) I tried navigating the Food Network website, orz, but Aable if you have a show you want us to contact just tell me which one and it will be done. :) Hoping you get better, fast.