The inevitable.

With all of the announcements from the SE party over the weekend, we knew the new version update information would be coming soon and here it is: This update does not deliver like the one from the SE party. LOL Not even close. This what they have listed:

The following is just a handful of the additions and adjustments planned for the next version update:

New Missions

The next episode in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan mystery is about to unfold. What role does the "mystery knight" play in this epic tale?

Chocobo Raising & Racing

Issues with text display during chocobo races will be addressed. In addition, players will now be able to receive condensed updates from trainers, as well as give multiple servings of feed to their chocobos at once.

Transportation

- Aht Urhgan
New NPCs have been stationed in Bastok, San d'Oria, and Windurst offering teleportation to Aht Urhgan Whitegate. A small fee is planned for the service.

- Choco-gals
Choco-gals will now offer chocobo rentals from the teleport crystals in the Eastern Altepa desert and the Yhoator Jungle, as well as from the leypoint in the WaENom Woodlands

- Outpost Teleportation
The level restriction on players allowed to use the outpost teleportation services located in Bastok, Windurst, and San d'Oria will be lowered. In conjunction with this change, a fee adjustment is also being considered.

New missions are always nice, but I do need to finish up the last few missions from the last update. I have not felt compelled to them because there really is no need, and I am sure there will be a reward at the end of the rainbow, but its not like any of the missions would take me more than an afternoon to finish. I have been hoping for something more, but I doubt it is coming. The last BCNM in the Jade Sepulcher was a little bit tougher but still not something I needed to worry about.

Chocobo racing and raising are virtually no existent to me, so I am not even going to bother with what they are saying there.

Now the new transportation has people raving, but to me its just a small improvement. I am always going to set my home point in the major city, Jeuno or Aht Urhgan or whatever, its just more convenient if more laggy, but to many others it is a way to avoid the massive congestion of Whitegate. It will definitely help getting around more, and allow people to set their home points in the starter cities.

In general, I am waiting for a beefier update, and I would very much like to see the patch notes when this update comes out. Thats it for pertinent information from this little bit. I wanted to WAR gear soon but I didn't take a picture of my WAR gear so that is right out. Lets see what else don't I have. LOL A subject for this post? That is for sure. I could talk about "camping" Faust now, which sucks, but definitely not as much as camping Ulli. Every time I want to complain about something in Sky, I just say to myself; "Hey Self, at least its not as bad as Ulli!" and then I smile a little. Faust is the only NM that sucks camping right now, MG would be bad if we couldn't farm Water while waiting on it. LOL But now I will focus on something, and that is the use of subjobs in end-game XP parties, and what two-handed weapon-users should be using.

I see this too often and it makes me cry, in end-game XP parties there are several different legitimate options for two-handed weapon-users, and none of those options are NIN. And especially for DRK, that option is not NIN dual-wielding axes. In general, NIN used to be a decent sub-job because it included damage mitigation, but offered just about nothing else for two-handed weapon-users. It was still demanded by many parties just to reduce the amount of healing that was required in XP parties. This was an acceptable option until SE introduced Seigan for SAM, and in the process SE completely gimped NIN for two-handed weapon-users. At this point, I believe that there are several decent subjobs available for this group of characters.
*WAR: Provides the ultimate benefit of Berserk and Double Attack, lacks the ability to reduce damage outside of Defender.
*SAM: Provides Hasso which when subbed gives 10% Haste on weapon speed, +10 Accuracy and +5 STR, also provides Seigan for damage mitigation. In addition, you get two Store TP traits, giving you the equivalent of Store TP +25, and you get Zanshin, which is a nice little boost since you are lacking Double Attack.
*THF: Provides SATA for pining hate on someone else, and not much else.
I generally think for end-game XP parties that SAM is the best option, you have control over yourself and the damage you take in general. WAR is nice but it can make you an MP sponge and that is just bad news for an XP party that usually involves a limited amount of healing magic. So, go level your SAM sub, not having it is just as gimp as not having WAR or THF sub leveled.

As for yesterday, it was pretty generic, except for a little ENM run. Lets see Sky was mostly Faust and Diorite camping. Got Faust, even though RMT were there and tried to claim, and got Diorite which was nice. Did another Genbu because we have been getting a lot of Zip as of late, but we have a bunch of other gem sets just waiting to be spawned that we had to pass on because it was so late after camping Faust for most of our time in Sky. Then after Sky Omoi arranged for a bunch of us to go do an ENM to try to get me a Maneater! ^.^/ It was the Eft ENM in Boneyard Gully and was ridiculously easy with 6 people. LOL We were two seconds off of the record after slaughtering it, and we were off to pop the Treasure Chest. Which was filled with just about absolutely nothing! LOL
After we did the ENM, our Nyzul semi-static group tried again, and were unsuccessful again to get through 5 levels again. The first run we got killing all enemies, light lamps in order, and kill all enemies and just ran out of time after having to deal with a Dahak. The second run was kill all enemies, kill one enemy and we did this in less than 5 minutes, then the third floor was kill the Enemy Leader and we got another frog and because of not waiting for some things to move and aggroing like half of the zone we had almost no MP when we engaged it. So things did not go well. As much as I want to rush through these areas, it is sometimes much easier to just kill things to get them out of the way. I think we will definitely be trying that and pulling things to camp rather than fighting them and risking aggroing everything. We will work this out eventually, but I am a bit frustrated with Nyzul and Salvage I must say, we just seem to get no luck with them at all.

This entry is a little shorter than normal, but give me a break, the last two were huge. LOL See you tomorrow.