Yeah, so, I forgot my pictures...

Sorry, still recovering a bit, went to bed tired last night and forgot to send the pictures to blogger before leaving for work. It has been relatively uneventful the last couple of days. So a quick recap. The first Versus Limbus run that I went on was close but a failure, a couple of bad pulls and a bit of lack of attention and we just ran out of time before the end. We got a decent amount of coins and some AF upgrade items, but no chip for Omega. :( We also tried for the Bhaflau Remnants win again, but we were only able to get the boss to 54% and we had a bunch of time. The problem was that we just didn't have enough damage, and I don't really know how to rectify the situation. The job situation is definitely not perfect in Versus right now, but we definitely need more direct damage for that fight. We will work something out I am sure, but its pretty hard to try to get a skillchain off during the fight, so it might just be more free nuking and weaponskilling, than trying to set something up.

In other news, I have gotten my RNG to 68 now, and pretty close to 69. I had a nice party with another JP RNG named Kenichii. He was really cool and spoke pretty decent English and most importantly wasn't ashamed to try to speak it or ask if he didn't know a certain phrase or expression. He was really funny, and once when we had a link and the tank went down relatively quickly we managed to basically duo the two imps between us. :) That party was a lot of fun. I should be able to get level 69 in the next party pretty easily, then I will just start leaching merit parties from my friends, since they rely on me to make them their merit parties anyway. LOL Interestingly enough, Kenichii had an Eurytos' Bow, while I only had my Selene's Bow, but he claimed that I was out damaging him, to which I was relatively shocked to hear, but then I kind of realized what was happening. I had about +15 Ranged Attack on him with other gear and also I had my 5 STR merits which have a decently large impact on ranged attacks to begin with. He was a bit concerned about missing Sidewinders, but I didn't notice that I was generally missing more or less than he was. Sidewinder is just unreliable, but the damage is just too good to pass up. ^.^/

Anyway, there is a new update that shows some promise but also cases me some consternation. The new Nyzul Isle staging point is going to be in the new update. On it's face the new Assault are looks really cool.

In the spirit of the Salvage area implemented in the December version update, we will be introducing more small-group content in the form of a randomly generated Assault area. In order to reach the highest level of this new Assault area, players will have to overcome various mechanisms and monsters, and contend with all manner of astonishing challenges.

and

Due to the special nature of Nyzul Isle, players will not receive Assault Points for missions completed in this area. However, you will have the chance to obtain items from the creatures that appear on each floor. Monsters from every corner of Vana'diel, including many powerful and ordinarily elusive Notorious Monsters, stalk the floors of Nyzul Isle. Triumph over these opponents and you may earn some truly rare and wonderful treasures!

Now the first quote seems to indicate to me that the areas should be pretty cool, and the noted progression for the levels seems to be different from that of all the other areas. Also the rewards may just be what everyone has been looking for. Yeah, that is Behemoth and Fafnir in those pictures... so maybe we will be looking at alternative ways to get their gear, along with new gear. That should make people very happy. But it does present a very interesting conflict. If people want to do this new zone, and they have to use their assault tags to go to Nyzul then they will not be getting AP to do Salvage. I suspect that SE has already thought of this and has decided that it is an acceptable consequence of being about to choose between the two areas. I think that would suck, as I would like to be able to do both. The solution to fixing issues with open world content that is currently a problem is not to block out other areas for people to get different gear. I will wait and see what will come up but I think this may be a bigger problem than it might initially appear.

Edit: I did some reading up on Bhaflau again, and I am even more confident that we will be able to beat it next time. I got some solutions to our problems, gotta stop thinking about it as another kind of fight and start treating it like a new kind of fight. If this new strategy works, I will tell you all on Monday!