Monday, April 30, 2007

Still not feeling well...

Posted by Ringthree at 9:51 AM

Ugh, I hate being sick and having extraneous health issues, but at least I am at work to do this update, unfortunately I didn't download my pictures for this entry. Oh well, I have been rather busy so lets start with jobs I have been leveling.

For some reason I am still finding it difficult to get XP on my WAR. The first party I had I died twice because the mobs were fighting were too hard, then it disbanded, down 4k XP. The next party I had, I died twice because the RDM wouldn't stand out of the way of AoE sleep from the Fly traps, I would Rampage, get hate then the mob would AoE sleep and I would die because the RDM was asleep, another 4k XP wasted. Then finally I got a decent party where I got two levels, Kirameki has to be so far ahead of me in XP by now, LOL. In this party we met a nice Taru NIN that also has a 75 WHM, that wanted to join Versus. So that was a definite bonus.

I also got my BRD to level 23, it is moving quickly along with Omoi's SAM and Izman's THF. We usually have a PL for most of our forays into random killing of stuff. Last time Glacian and Aable came along, and Glacian brought his pocket BRD, a friend old character, to kill aggroing mobs and to keep us alive. :) In other news, I got my RDM to level 5! Wootz! LOL And I did some xping on my RNG, which was nice, and I think I will be using that in Dynamis until I can get some more xp on my SAM, because that has been hurting a bit since I hardly ever xp it and I use it in Dynamis all the time. I have also been working on some Merits, I have 4 right now and I am unsure how I want to use them.

More in a bit. Alright where was I, what did we do this weekend. Ahh, well, I got a Bomb Queen Ring. :) We only had about 11 people for the last run, but it was pretty easy. Aable spent most of the time just counter-tanking it anyway, but it is nice to have the BQ Ring, instead of using the Jelly Ring which isn't always beneficial. Also, we did sky and got another Despot, but no MG or Faust, looks like we are going to have to have people waiting at the spawn points to alert us when we need to head down because the RMT are all over these things now that they can't have Ullikummi, same with Curtana. It kind of sucks, they just shifted from one thing to another, but still its way better than Ullikummi was before.

Now before I get to my evasion set up, I should mention that SE has announced the next update and it looks pretty good from just the small blurb we have gotten so far.

The next version update for FINAL FANTASY XI is scheduled to take place in early June. Players can look forward to a new, large-scale battle system, as well as additional Assault Missions, Aht Urhgan missions, quests, monsters, merit point abilities, and more!
Now, the first picture has been speculated to be Hades, or maybe an unmasked Dark Rider. The middle is of course Aphmau and one of her automatons, and the most interesting is the picture on the right, of Hazhalm Testing Grounds which has already been alluded to in the story line, but not openned as of yet. It appears it will be a new form of battle, like Dynamis or Salvage, but I hope that they tweak it in a way that is more open to larger LS events than something like Salvage or Limbus. Maybe 36 people instead of 18 or 64. And hopefully rewarding like Limbus and not like Salvage.

As, I don't have pictures of my Evasion set up I think I am going to skip that today and talk about my potential Merit Point abilities. I had a nice xp party last night with Izman, Omoi, Bg and two JP players, one WHM and a RDM named Turbo and the guy was stacked with good gear, even had Morrigan's Robe. o.o; It was pretty sweet, in that party without a BRD we managed 15k in one hour. Two merits for me, bringing my total to 4 and the need to spend them soon, without letting them rot. So this is what I am looking at:
RNG:
* Snapshot: Reduces delay for ranged attacks, -2% delay per point.
SAM:
* Shikikoyo: Share TP above 100 with a party member.
* Overwhelm: Grants a damage bonus with weapon skills perfomed face-to-face with an enemy. Increased damage bonus 5% per level.

I think that I am favoring Snapshot and Overwhelm first, just because they mean more damage over time, and free 6% haste on ranged attacks is pretty neat considering there is no other way to haste them.

Thats about it for today, sorry about the lack of pictures but once I am feeling better things will get back to normal.

2 comments

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Blog Zero

Posted by Ringthree at 9:58 AM

I am sick again. :P No blog today. Hopefully I will be better for tomorrow.

3 comments

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

What can Izman do for you?

Posted by Ringthree at 1:27 AM

Apparently, he gives you TH5. Seriously, if you need something just let Izman kill it. The drop rate with an Izman related kill is 100%, unless like you don't need two Homam heads. LOL Did pretty well in Sky last night considering the fact that the RMT's new favorite camp is Faust. LOL No full sets which was kind of weird, so no God's, but it happens just very rarely. I know that Versus does God's differently than most LS's but its nice to do God's and stuff at almost every event. Keeps people on their toes.

After sky Izman, Glacian, Omoi, Sholo and I helped Sonik, a person that wanted to join Versus, to get Sky access. I hadn't done this in a while, but it was fun to repraise it. The last time I did this was a while ago, but it was definitely fun. The best part is that it was only ZM6 on, so no running around getting fragments. So we headed to Quicksand Caves and quickly routed the Anticans there, with the set up of NIN, NIN, WAR, SAM, WHM, SMN. So no sleepga, and we just basically solo/duo'ed them, pretty simple, and we were off to Return to Delkfutt's Tower and the brother fight. It like most fights in this game that you do more than once wasn't as hard the second time around. I have started using more Evasion gear for fights like this, it just makes things easier, even though my evasion gear is nothing to write home about, and I don't use evasion earrings because it is a lot to give up in the ear. Maybe when I get an Ethereal Earring I will swap that in for the Brutal Earring in my Evasion set up, but I don't want to over load on evasion, and end up gimping my ability to keep hate. Anyway, the Kam'lanaut fight was really easy, and it was dead before I even noticed.

I glanced down at like 90%, then I was putting up a set of shadows to get ready for a Blade: Jin and I couldn't get my shadows up, they just wouldn't cast, then I realized it was because Kam'lanaut was already dead. LOL

As a side note, on the way up the tower, we ran into Butcher who was having a bit of trouble soloing Alkyoneus, so we helped out. Once we got there it died really quickly and he even got the drop.

After the BCNM, Sonik was off to do a ton of cutscenes, Glacian and Sholo had to go, so Omoi went AFK for a bit and Izman and I went to QSC to just mess around. I had my NPC on me, so I popped out Zenji and Iz and I started clearly mobs around the Pendragon NM (which never popped). It was my NPC's best day yet. Most of the time he is an idiot, but he did manage to finally something productive, like removing Silence. Not only that, but Zenji also hit level 35. So... like congratulations, I guess. LOL When Omoi and Sonik showed we headed out to the Ancient Vessel to finish things up. Unfortunately, Sonik was a bit overanxious and clicked the ??? without knowing what it would do. LOL So we got worm aggro with the pot and got back to back -ga'ed and we died. So Omoi had to home point and run all the way back, she grabbed Akeem to come and help out with getting the Galka doors open. Then we popped the pot again and slaughtered it. :)
Pretty light day overall, but I did recap XP on my NIN in all the running around,

Tomorrow I think I am going to post my crappy Evasion set up and what I would like my set up to be, and get your thoughts on it.

5 comments

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Supply run.

Posted by Ringthree at 9:49 AM

You know, I would love to have witty and entertaining post title everyday. That would be my goal, like a daily goal. Something nice for the reader to latch onto while reading the entry, a nice little bow tied around the gift of the blog. Today's title should have meaning, and it should have substance, but it doesn't. It is the result of a convoluted thought process and delusional mental wanderings. Something about lacking the resources to create a good title, thus needing new provisions, or "supplies". Thus the run to get those supplies, and thus the title. The bow today is rather tattered and ill-tied. Ah well, some days you are Monet and some days you are a 2nd grader with finger paint.

Anyway, Limbus last night, very successful, did Temenos Central West to make up for our lost chip from last Thursday. Finally got good item and time chest drops. The chest was floating in the air, interesting enough for me to screenshot it, and Glacian got the second half of his SAM upgrade on the last chest of the zone. So, we will be trying the paired Temenos run again, with the proper pairs this time ^.^/ After the run, we popped another Jailer of Fortitude, and again no drop on the Torque. The axe? Well the axe is a story for another day.

In my opinion, I would like to do one more Jailer of Fortitude before we do Faith, because Faith is a nasty caster and Fortitude is a bit of a joke, we basically cut our time in half for Fortitude on the second kill. I was quite pleased with the speed of Fortitude, but for Faith we will need to have different positioning, and have everyone moving a lot more. Should still be relatively easy, but no reason to take big risks. Actually... LOL We have so many pop items it shouldn't be an issue.

After Fortitude, Thaz, Omoi (Kira), Aable and I headed out to get some XP. It didn't go that well at first. Then after replacing the tank we were going again. We got to level 61 in this party, after working to get about 4k back that I had lost from the previous party. I got to use my Amemet Mantle +1 and my Minuet Earring. :) We stayed up pretty late in this party, and hopefully we will get a little farther this week and maybe able to catch up to Glacian on his 66 NIN so we don't have to worry about pick up tanks from now on.

Now for some other random things I have lying around. First is Izman's PLDx2 TH. Very effective when you want two A. Hands. Not very effective when you want decent Homam pieces. LOL

Omoi and I helped Doyah with finishing Sandy 6-2. It was a cactuar that likes to spam 1000 Needles, and I pulled it close to all three of us so that it would distribute the damage but Doyah kept moving to stay out of range. LOL Well, it never hit outside of 1000 Needles, so it wasn't that bad at all. I like this shot of fighting it, I look all posed to strike.

Finally, this is Kaiya, enjoying themselves, while I was dead. Ummm... I really needed a quick raise on this one, or wait... no... that didn't sound right either. I should have just homepointed. LOL

2 comments

Monday, April 23, 2007

Another out of town weekend.

Posted by Ringthree at 12:00 PM

The Taphouse Grill is a great little beer bar in Virginia Beach if you are interested. I was, and I tasted many of their fine brews, and I was pleased, but this lead me to be without much information to post about this weekend.

Here are a few things that I do know:
1. There has to be information on the new update relatively soon. The last update was the beginning of March, and we usually here about the new update a couple of weeks to a month in advance. Now, I might also be acting a little overambitious about this because they did patch in Chocobo Racing late in the month, and I think that I might have the dates confused about it. The next update might be in June instead of May, and if so, it could be a while before we get new information.

Honestly, there are a couple of reasons that I am interested in the new update. The first is that the last update was pretty much A+, no complaints, except maybe that Despot is now camped by RMT, instead of Ullikummi, but our claim rate is just fine even though I just hate losing anything to RMT. I hate the people that buy gil that support the RMT. I really could care less about any other indiscretions at this point as long as you don't buy gil. Buying gil is the ultimate in failure to me. Ahh, the RMT rate again, I knew that would come up eventually. LOL Anyway, the new update is going to include different things that people are really looking forward to, but have been able to taste already. Salvage interim rewards, ToAU storyline, Nyzul Isle weapons, etc. I think we are going to get some more job adjustments soon. DRG really could use with another Jump or two.

2. The next FFXI event, the 5th Anniversary party, is in early May. I am expecting the announcement of the next expansion, or at least the mention of it, the official confirmation of it. It is likely going to be the Far East, but it could be something else because most people speculated that ToAU was going to be the Far East. In this case though, it would be difficult to not to be the Far East, because Aht Urhgan is at war with the Far East and unlike before the last expansion where the only mention of the Far East was the origin of Tenzen, though not unimportant it did not imply the direction of the story, and other random mentions in item descriptions. For the next expansion, they have already directly mentioned them in the official announcements here: and have also mentioned in the storyline that the Yagudo armies of the Far East are ready to advance on Aht Urhgan. I could even see an easy explanation of how this conflict plays out affects the next kind of battle system like Conquest and Besieged.

Definitely looking forward to May as a busy month for the game.

As for me, I just did a couple of God's yesterday, and shocking on Genbu, Izman got the kill shot and even more shockingly it dropped two Aquarian Hands. Izman's TH is better than everyone else. Izman TH makes double drops inevitbale. LOL I swear we get more double drops since that one Omega run with the two heads than anything else. Also did a Seiryu and Aable got Dryadic Head, after almost losing it to a DC at the end of the fight. After that a couple of us went to Sea to finish up some organs for gorgets. I now have enough for my Soil Gorget Glacian got enough for his Flame Gorget, and Pb and Aable are on the way to getting their gorgets too.

I have some screenshots that I didn't download that prove Izman's double drop ability, and some other neat things. We have Limbus and Sea tonight, then probably level WAR and BRD with Aable's DRK to catch up with Glacian's NIN. That will be fun. :)

4 comments

Friday, April 20, 2007

Total waste.

Posted by Ringthree at 10:59 AM

Blah, yesterday, not so good either. Sky was bland, getting beaten by RMT to claim everything and having GM's not care one bit. Limbus was much harder than expected, we did Temenos Central Floor 1 and everything was going really well until we got to the Weapon and the Pot, and for some reason we couldn't do any real damage to the weapon. I think our strategy was a bit flawed, as we only had 10 people and 3 were BLM but they were to hold back to be ready to -ga the mobs together, but we just struggled on accuracy on the Weapon, even though we handled the eye and the dragon without so much as a single problem. The Weapon just blew us away, and I don't know why. Oh well, at least next time we will get it right, we probably should have held off on this run until we had more people anyway. Kind of disappointing to lose a chip like that but it happens and we learn from it. Its just frustrating to lose when you didn't really do anything wrong just didn't have enough people. We could have easily done an Apollyon for my set. Frustrating. (It has been noted in the comments, that we got the pairings wrong, we tried to double check before the run but the Wiki was down and I thought we had the pairings correct, but I remembered longer pulls from when we did it before, that explains a TON about why the Weapon was so much harder than expected. LOL) After Limbus, we went to Sea to collect more organs for new Gorgets, which went just as swimmingly as Limbus. LOL We started doing Xzomits no problem, then moved inside to help Kaiya get some Aern organs... that sucked. We got tons of links for some reason and I ended up dying a bunch of times then heading to bed. We did get 1 HQ Aern organ though, so it wasn't a complete waste.

I have no pictures from yesterday, nothing interesting to report really. I will leave this open to add some more later on, because this post is like yesterday, lame. Its hard because nothing new is really happening on the FFXI front even though SE should be talking about the new version update soon I think. Maybe, maybe not. We will see.

I posted this elsewhere as my current thoughts on adding intermediate rewards to Salvage:

What is really missing from Salvage is intermediate rewards. Everything in the game has some kind of intermediate reward in this kind of situation. Dynamis has currency and crafting items, Limbus has coins and AF+1 upgrades, even HNM have junk and crafting item drops. You are not always going to get RDM hat from Xarc, you are only going to be able to do Omega or Ultima after collecting a certain number of chips, you aren't always going to get E. Body, Ridill or D. Ring. But you do get something for your effort. Once something for your effort is added, then there will be incentive to go even if you don't get the remnants piece. The pace at which people are getting Salvage gear for the quality of the pieces appears to be about right. Remember that Salvage gear really is downright amazing, and proper alternatives to some of the other gear already available. As a full set, they are better than most things in the game, and remember that some parts of abjuration gear sets are pretty much worthless. This isn't something people should just have piling up in their MH's. Adding intermediate rewards, whatever they may be, would make Salvage worth the effort because it would be something you would get even on runs that give no Salvage piece reward.

3 comments

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Mmmm, tastes like suck.

Posted by Ringthree at 1:11 AM

Dynamis is a four hour long slog. This is made less sloggish by having nice AF drops sprinkled to and fro. In the starter cities, the drops are more common but of lower quality. In the outlands, the drops are fewer but of higher quality and thusly more treasured. Dynamis-Jeuno usually has something like 10-12 drops. But, oh, not yesterday. One, yes, one AF dropped. RNG head. 4 hours for 1 RNG head. That is suck defined. The run had limited numbers, no wipes, but only one AF. Out of the four essentially wasted hours of Dynamis here is the little entertainment I got. First, you know that crazy red light that is over the entrance to the palace that appears randomly sometimes, well, IT'S ACTUALLY THREE LIGHTS ZOMG! (Well, in this shot it is two, but trust me, its like 3 lights, and they expand and contract as other effects go off around them.) Yeah, that is how boring this run was, I was looking at the dots, waiting for something to drop. In fact, I declared my disgust with this zone, then the zone spoke back: LOL Poor Cherbui. Well, at least he was wearing decent gear this time. :)

After Dynamis, we tried to make a party for our level 60 jobs, which failed because of a lack of tanks, again. Then tried to level SAM and BRD and THF again, and that failed because we suck. LOL Links and such don't help, and staring at Iz's naked ass isn't that great either. I just went to bed after that, and had nightmares. Horrible nightmares. LOL

Dynamis kills my blog because it usually sucks, we hardly ever get good drops anymore. It's really sad. Anyway, there was some interesting information gleaned from the Japanese Special Development Interview with SE including but not limited to the following highlights.
* Salvage: They understand that it is hard and want it that way, but are interested in adding some intermediate rewards to draw people's attention to it.
*Nyzul: Weapons that come from Nyzul level 100 are definitely more than they appear to be.
*New Jobs: They are still going through adjustments, COR will still be getting more rolls with time, but can't be stated conclusively because they can't disclose where the game is heading.
*Expansion: Confirmed but no information.

I am hoping for a better translation than what has been provided so far, but I am not holding out much hope. Apparently, the discussion uses a lot of colloquialism making it a bit difficult to translate. But the most important thing I think to indicate here is that they intentionally mentioned that the 5 year anniversary of FFXI will coincide with an event/party that SE is having in mid-May... perhaps an expansion announcement?

0 comments

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Two for Tuesday.

Posted by Ringthree at 1:43 AM

I actually stole the title from someone in LS chat after our second Byakko. The first one resulted in two Dryadic: Legs abjurations as can be seen here: The second was two Neptunal: Hands abjurations as seen here: A very nice haul for many different people in the LS. I believe Akanea and Elfaria got the Shura legs and Biblo and Pb got the Hecatomb hands, and in fact Kingscissom made a set of cursed mitts for Pb after the run and managed to get a set of -1's. Pretty cool indeed. We are getting a lot of things for people that deserve them in the LS. For some reason it is really rough still just getting to Byakko, people not bringing sneaks, etc. but we have a lot of new people right now and I am sure they will work it out.

Right after Sky, I helped Rygar and Omoi to kill an NM for the Dainslaiff for Rygar's PLD. On the way there, I encountered a nice sandstorm. I have always been fascinated by these, just thought they looked cool. Anyway, we headed down to grab the Proconsul which was already up luckily. We got a link on the pull but handled it just fine. I just took this screenshot during the fight, but after looking back on it I thought it turned out really well. Fighting a huge Antican in a darkened hallway, green light effects and everything. Gives it that eerie battle effect. I like the shot a whole lot.

Anyway, after that I wanted to level WAR and BRD, but it has just been very hard to find a tank at level 60 the last couple of days so we just switched to BRD and SAM, and Izman joined us on his THF. And while we were just running around Elfaria was having a bad time on their PLD with a noob party so we picked them up too! We were a happy-go-lucky bunch, just killing mobs for lots of XP, Hellzfury was PLing us the whole time, soon Elfaria had to go, and a sinister plot seemed to be forming in Hellz's mind... MURDER! Actually, it was pretty funny, we had moved down to the trees on the beach, because we thought the new Bounty Hunters were pretty easy to take care of... they weren't really. Add that with an IT crab and you have a recipe for disaster. The nice thing is that I did manage to kill the crab that killed us, with a Soul Voice requiem, right after I died! Oh sweet musical revenge! Omoi and I got to 16 on BRD and SAM and Izman was not far behind getting 15 on his THF, hopefully we can do this again tonight after Dynamis. It was really fun.

2 comments

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

I love Fish and Chips.

Posted by Ringthree at 1:03 AM

Thanks Omoi for the Fish and Chips, they are yummy. LOL Anyway, yesterday was Limbus, first time Versus did a second-tier Temenos. Elementals that turned into Mystic Avatars. We had a little bit of roughness on Ifrit, initially because I got wacked by a huge Flaming Crush. ; ; Then it got pulled up by the mages and 2 houred, which definitely sucked, but we picked outselves up and finished it off. Carbuncle was a joke in comparison, though because of our troubles with Ifrit we were low on time, and Carbuncle took forever to two hour and we were holding off on damage until after it two-houred to be sure that the mages didn't pull hate. Ended up finishing with something like 2 minutes left, so a close call but we definitely know how to do it for next time. Only got a DRK drop and Jess already had his so it was basically just wasted, but a decent coin haul for an upper level Temenos run. My guess is that this one and the Temenos with paired monsters are probably the two hardest Temenos upper level zones. The upper-level Beastmen should really be no problem outside of the the last mob's Astral Flow, but it is just an inevitability and should easily be a win. Doing these the first time is much more difficult than doing them after some practice. Even though we are doing some Temenos runs, I think we are definitely going to have to do a few more Omega's before we do Ultima. The only Omega we have done was a bit dicey and a little more practice on the easier boss should smooth things out for Ultima.

After Limbus we did some Yovra hunting. Pretty easy over all, things would only get funny when it would Charmga, and everyone would start running after the BLM's. I guess we killed something like 8 of them for everyone. Considering how easy these are to beat, I am surprised that people consider them a problem. Just basically two darkness skillchains and they are dead. It was nice to get these organs, but I would really like to try to do another Sea god next week or more Ix'aerns. More Sea weapons would be nice, we definitely have a few WARs and MNKs that would like the axes and knuckles, and getting the torques would always be great. Maybe for next week. Just on a side note we only did Om'yovras in the Limbus areas, because the drop rate is 100%, they are a little more difficult than the NQ Yovra's but they are still really easy.

After finishing up getting Yovra organs, Izman and I had a short party, but it was NIN, WAR, WAR, RDM, BRD, BRD. ^.^/ Sweet. :) We made something like 20k in just over an hour, got 2 merits, but haven't spent them yet. I think it is going into something SAM related since I use that second most, and as my priority job in Dynamis. Overthrow is my big first thought, but it could be sometime different when I get around to actually spending the points. Well, I pretty much went to bed right after this party, so nothing major happened last night, definitely very little to SS for the blog.

So, with limited SS's for the blog, where do I go today? I was thinking about AF +1 items, but I am thinking that I might save up the coins for something different, maybe just sell them, for something... larger. We will see. But, now for the drooling, I have peaked at the different AF +1 but I haven't really done a fair analysis of each set, and I have a full set for NIN, SAM and RNG now. I guess, I am looking at the Myochin Kote +1 for the obvious boost in STR over my current Hachiman Kote, which are marginal at best for my needs. I also prefer the Myochin +1 because of the DEX over say some kind of Gigas bracelets, because I do use /WAR most of the time in Dynamis for my SAM. Now the Myochin Haidate +1 are also a very good option for the simple fact that I just use plain old Myochin Haidate right now for TP build which is just really gimp. Now these are no where as good as the Kote but far superior to my current gear. I don't know, I think I would rather have the hands than the legs thinking about it. So that puts me at Ninja Tekko +1 and Myochin Kote +1... Too much to upgrade, not enough coins. LOL

Well, thats it, have Sky today, and then a small Dynamis-Jeuno tomorrow. Hopefully, WAR AF2 hands will go free lot, and I can get them for like 4 points. That is the only thing I can think that I would need for WAR from Dynamis any time soon.

1 comments

Monday, April 16, 2007

Attempts to be efficient are snuffed once again.

Posted by Ringthree at 9:44 AM

Even when you try to make a party and you try to have it start in an efficient manner, it will always take 30-45 minutes to start. This is an iron law of FFXI, usually the end is that you have an efficient party or something like that, but sometimes it just ends too early. I had a party on my WAR on Saturday that could have easily gotten me to 62-63 but I am the on that needed to go. Leaving a party that is making 300+ xp per kill at level 60 without an Empress Band makes the baby Jesus cry. Ah well, I did get to level 60, but Kira still doesn't have her Opo-opo crown and that needs to be resolved immidiately. She still needs Windurst fame, but that should not be a problem... actually with the way that Omoikitte does quests, it could take forever. Ahh well, we have Limbus tonight then Sea, so it will have to happen before or after that.

This weekend wasn't that eventful as I was busy with other things, but I did manage to XP, and got to do so in Mamook in a new area. Its definitely not as good as I had hoped. Wyverns and Crabs aren't too great to chain on. Didn't get any chains high enough to mention, and then there was this guy. He prevented us from moving all around the camp, and when we fought him it didn't go that well with the set up we had, and constant Aerogas didn't help us to beat him, so we just ended up avoiding him. I did get my last two merits for Katana level 8 though, which is nice. I have basically maxed out what I want to do for NIN damage-wise. I could do Subtle Blow and Ninja Tool Expertise, but I can't see anything else I would want to waste merits on for NIN. I think I am just going to use my Merits to help out my SAM and RNG which have very nice merit abilities. Overwhelm to level 3 would be awesome.

Outside of some WAR and NIN xp I didn't have time to do very much, I did a wee bit of crafting, but its slow work with the synth I am using right now. LOL I could have it done faster if I could focus on it for more than like 10 seconds. I did get to take a few neat shots though, like me in WAR AF. See that chest? So sexy! And then this rather funny picture that if you know this person, you will understand why it is so funny. Thats it for today, I will have some more for tomorrow.

2 comments

Friday, April 13, 2007

Izman's Iron Will.

Posted by Ringthree at 2:10 AM

Everyone makes mistakes, it just happens. Nothing to regret. Getting an Abyssal Earring for your DRK before realizing that everyone levels NIN eventually. Claiming that you should get 8 MP merits even if you will never level a mage job. Accidentally dropping something important, the list is basically endless. We all make mistakes.

Now let me tell you about Iron Will. Iron Will is a tier 2 PLD merit ability, requiring 3 merit points to acquire, no small investment even for the most prolific XPer. Here is the discription of Iron Will:

* Adds a spell interruption down effect to Rampart
* +19% per merit
Quite impressive, no? This was Izman's choice. Or, should I say mistake. LOL You know there is a confirmation button for a reason there Iz? LOL Ok, ok, I will stop now, no more Iron Will jokes. Yes, Izman made a mistake and accidentally merited this ability when he meant to merit something else. I think Iz will be sure to read the description from now on.

Anyway, Izman is a very funny man, and does funny things when we are XPing. Here is one of them. I don't remember what exactly brought this on but I am guessing since it involved Spice Girls and Tom Hanks references it was in retaliation for more Iron Will jokes. Anyway, this is the conversation post-hoc, and the responses were universal and unanimous. These are the days that make me pleased. I have ended my grumpy streak this week, I think and this did much to end the bad streak.

Here is another thing that helped end the streak, finally a NIN drop from Temenos. I had a NIN drop from Apollyon from the very first day that I did Limbus with ShutUpandDance. So it was nice to finally get the pair. There are two obvious choices here: This would be used for WS's during the day, when my Koga Tekko are basically useless. I currently do not own Dusk Gloves and I don't know if I would spend the gil on them right now. I think that I would pair them with my O's Kote during the day. This wouldn't be as good as Dusk Gloves for the obvious reasons but still very good. I am more looking at purchasing an Arhat's Gi +1 and a Arhat's Jinpachi +1 to finish out my tanking gear. I know that Dusk Gloves would be very good for my day time set up and also tanking on /DRK, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. The second option would be these: Now, you might ask, hey what are you thinking? But this is more a question of inventory space than anything else. Since I am always leveling jobs and like to keep the gear on me instead of muling everything, I rarely have space for a full set of AF on me just to have movement speed at night. So doing this would allow me to complete again the NIN AF feet quest then pretty much permanently toss them into storage. As it is right now I do not use my NIN AF feet with any regularity, and I really should. Finally there is a Dark Horse consideration: This is the best Evasion head piece that a NIN can use, and I am seriously considering moving back to keeping an Evasion set up around just in case for emergency, it basically has +12 Evasion and then +8 AGI for other defensive procs like Parry.

Well, after a successful sky run, more Diorite and a Despot, and another very successful Limbus run, even with multiple SMN mobs trying to get everyone killed, actually they only killed Hellz, EP and Pb in all, even when we had to basically kill two of them and eat two Astral Flows. Ah well, BLM, NIN, WHM, DRG and a few others that were lost because of a lack of interest. After Limbus we were off to XP somemore, and got several more merits, for which I have put three more into Katana for level 7. I have one left over at this point, so only two more before I cap Katana, which leads me to a new predicament. I need to think more clearly about what I am doing with my SAM and my RNG. I initially put one merit into Archery, thinking that it would benefit both my RNG, and my SAM/RNG... but then I came to a stunning realization... why do I need SAM/RNG when I have a 75 RNG. That lead me to another consideration, Eurytos' Bow is very expensive and I have better spending priorities, so that being the case, why not just use Othinus' Bow for XP parties where I believe my DoT is much higher than my Selene's Bow, and then just pick up a very cheap Hellfire and use bullets for when I need to be a heavy hitter DD, like against Salvage bosses, God's, etc. So, I am thinking of switching over to Marksmanship for my other 4 merits, but I am not committed on it yet, as I mostly come to most events as NIN now. But before I even consider that, I am going to merit the heck out of SAM and RNG. Overthrow and a couple of others for RNG for sure.

Well, thats about it, see you on Monday.

5 comments

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sucks. Really sucks.

Posted by Ringthree at 12:40 AM

I was trying to come up with a better title for this thread but really couldn't come up with anything. Anyway, we beat Byakko and it finally dropped Haidate. Then my computer crashed right before I could lot (It was mine for the lotting) and I couldn't get on until the second that it distributed. So congratulations to Gordor for getting the Haidate. I am just going to leave it at that, still a bit upset about that one. XD

Compiled on that I got sick again yesterday, so sick and disappointed and puking (yeah, you wanted to know that LOL) I spent pretty much the whole day at meriting and got 7 merits in a great party. Got to chain 195 in the mire, should have been able to get to 200+ but people started piling into the zone at about chain 100. It was actually surprising to see us get to 195 before it broke. I put them all into Katana merits, which are now at level 6, only about 5 more merits and I will have that all capped out.

We had Dynamis-Xarcabard yesterday and it sucked too. The run wasn't good, the drops weren't good, and it was just a slog. Let me be clear on this, NIN in outlands sucks. They don't do any damage on the demons after the first pull and they just give the mobs lots of TP. Double handed weapons are much more efficient in terms of damage verse TP given to mobs. Anyway, this is Omoikitte the traitor, look she is now Bastokan and at least she has finally picked the right nation. Went farming for air tanks directly after Dynamis but it didn't go very well, and I just went to bed relatively early.

Not a very exciting two days, in fact they pretty much sucked. Hopefully, today will be better.

2 comments

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Some more merits.

Posted by Ringthree at 2:36 AM

I merited again last night, staying up too late as always. LOL Anyway, it was a simple Mire party because we couldn't grab a BRD, for which Iceblazek won the parse. Izman was testing out his new Fortitude Axe, and blowing through Virtue Stones quite quickly, but still parsing lower than he would have if he was using dual Axes, but he also had quite a bit to go before capping his Great Axe skill and still needs Steel Cyclone. So a couple of parties like that and he will be fine. Just had some fun, nothing special about the party except that I got 2 more merits for 3 total, and, of course, I forgot to put them into Katana before logging in Sky for the night. Oh well, I can't see using them for anything in particular in Sky and I can just use them whenever we are done. Ahh, well it was a fun party and Ice is a bit paranoid about parsing results, but then again, he is a bit paranoid about everything. LOL

We did SW Apollyon last night again, building our second Omega set, very easy run and very successful. We cleared the last floor of elementals with three minutes or so left on the clock. The only thing I would have changed about the run is that we should have had the BLM's burn the last tree on the Trent floor because it always gives the melee a bit of trouble with the nasty shadow wiping AoE, but outside of that a very successful run. Immediately after the run we headed to the Garden to pop Jailer of Fortitude. Surprisingly this Jailer was a lot less difficult than we anticipated even though our initial strategy for the fight was just a bit off. We had planned to try to pull one of the Kf'Ghrah and just quickly Zerg it while Izman kited the Fortitude and Elf kited the other Kf'Ghrah, but they were having none of that and just stuck to Izman. So we just quickly switched up our strategy and just had multiple kiters for Fortitude and had everyone just take down each Ghrah quickly. Then just kited and held Fortitude for SC's. This wasn't very difficult at all, and was a quite enjoyable fight. ^.^/ The only people that died was the occasional BLM who got wacked with a Vorpal Blade after a particularly good nuke, and the a RDM or two that got hate from constant Gravities and nuking, which were actually landing quite well. It didn't take very long for our first Fortitude fight, it can probably be tanked straight up, but I can see sticking hate without being able to get a decent SATA off could be a bit difficult. Especially since almost all of our damage was coming off of bursted SC's.

Sky today, keeping quite busy is very nice. Probably wont run very late, so I think helping Kirameki complete her Opo-opo crown and completing G3 will be my priority after Sky. Then just some more leveling if it doesn't get too late. I am looking at my WAR gear and I am thinking I am pretty much set through to 75 on that. Just need to get two axes, and even then one of them will also be beneficial for my RNG too. In a completely different note we finally got some money from Sky which helped everyone in the LS a ton, it is so nice to be able to do Sky again. LOL The poor RMT are left with just cockblocking in Sky now because they can't sell gems, they are basically just farming Kirin for Shining Cloths which is just about laughable. Sure it hurts us trying to sell items for LS money but at least we are able to get gear from many of the Gods we haven't been able to for about 2-3 months.

Thats it for today. ^.^/

4 comments

Monday, April 09, 2007

Ouch.

Posted by Ringthree at 12:50 AM


This is what wandering around gets you. Ranged shots that go through shadows make the baby Jesus cry. Anyway, had a relatively busy weekend, missed Friday dealing with some family stuff, but I definitely got to XP some when I got back from that, and got a good deal of merits. Dumped all of them into Katana, which is now level 3 with 1 left over. Only need now, what like 13 more to cap it out, orz. Oh well, we have Limbus and Sea tonight, but after that is going to be XP time, and I would like to have at least level 4 Katana by the end of the night, if not more. I would like this to round out my NIN which I have been neglecting for a while, since there is not much more after Katana for NIN merit-wise that I already don't have done, I will start filling in the holes I have on other jobs like RNG and SAM, which do have a lot of beneficial merit abilities.

Speaking of that merit party on Friday, we spent most of the day at the Greater Colibri camp, fighting the occasional Wivre. Rather interesting to fight as they do not turn, much like regular dragons. And I believe they have different attack forms depending on where you stand. In the front you do little damage, but it attacks more slowly, while from the rear you can do more damage, but it attacks more quickly and it double attacks more often. Maybe I am just dreaming that I noticed this difference, but it seemed rather apparent. I have noticed that many different Aht Urhgan mobs have different modes of attack. Like the puddings have two different modes, one normal and one with spikes bubbling out of its head. Colibiri have the same kind of mode switch also, shifting from open mouth and closed mouth modes. I have no idea the significance of these modes though. I haven't noticed a damage or resistance difference.

We did some light Sky farming yesterday because of Easter, but it was rather successful. Outside of the whole weakened with no shadows stunning of a statue in Ullikummi's room getting a link then getting my face eaten thing. That didn't go well, lol. Oh well, it was all in fun. Still rather productive. Getting Zip while farming Diorite is great, but getting Zip because it aggros the BRD and watching the BRD scramble into the room with Zip is toe is just hilarious. Also hilarious is this:

In random NM news, found Zoraal Ja's Pkuucha floating around, and being interested in the Fowling Earring, I got a couple of people to come and help out with it all we got though was two earth crystals. >.< Then while Omoi and I were leveling BRD and SAM with Izman helping out, we ran into Stray Mary all we got was a Mary's Milk. Oh well, never been that great with NM drops but it was fun time for all. It was a rather bland weekend outside of that, so hopefully things will be better tonight for a more exciting update.

1 comments
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