I'm back.

So where was I? Ahh, this is going to be a huge ass post and is going to take all day. And to all those that complained to me about not doing the blog for two weeks, I appreciate it. :) I know that sounds weird but its nice to hear that people actually care about what I write here, especially when you are on bed rest. But enough of that, on with the show.

Ok, so since so much time has passed, I am going to go over things that happened that were important, but not necessarily the order in which they occured. :) Ok, lets see. Lets go over MNK quickly, I am currently 54, about 2k to 55. Some of that time was spent soloing DCs in Crawlers Nest, because again proving that MNK is the best job ever, I can easily solo the Crawlers there, without the assistance of a RDM. I have even gotten to the point were I can clear each of the Labyrinth Lizard rooms before they respawn, usually two Lizards without having to rest. Now, I normally wouldn't do this, but I have been farming the Lizards to pay for D. Legs and eventually D. Body, and I have actually been making pretty decent money. This isn't to say that I have been partying, because most of my XP has been made in some pretty decent parties, I just note the soloing because it proves MNK is the best job ever. It's also nice knowing that I am going to level into 22% haste gear if I want it, and that is before I start hunting for Black Belt items. I have also finished up the quest line for MNK AF, which was surprisingly easy on my NIN. I solo'd the first two missions, one against a ghost in Gusgen Mines, to obtain my Beat Cesti, which were promptly left in the MH, the other against a MNK and PLD Orc in Davoi, they took forever to kill, literally like 15 minutes to solo them on my NIN, this fight netted me my Temple Gaiters. Finally, Omoi and I duo'd Huu Xalmo the Savage, this was another extended fight, as Huu Xalmo must have something like a million HP, but no accuracy. I got his feather returned it to Ayame
for my Temple Hose and finished up my MNK AF quests. Here is the problem though, when I re-quested my NIN feet after doing the AF upgrade I had to go through all the quests, then reopen the Dark Spark quest so the Coffer in SSG would load with my Ninja Kyahan. The problem more specifically is that once I have done this, there is no way to cancel the Dark Spark quest on NIN, I have to complete it, which means that I not only have to get the three coffers for my MNK, I now have to get the one in Ifrit's Cauldron for my NIN hands. To double the problem, the next item I want to upgrade for my NIN is the hands, and that requires the NIN AF upgrade item from Temenos to match the Ebony Lacquer I already have. Shall I continue this bind of binds? We are planning to do about a week or two of Apollyon to burn through some Omega sets. Now why does that matter? Because if I get NIN hands quest done now, I will have to toss the current set that I have to be able to hold them, so I will have to them re-quest them AGAIN. Quite the Gordian Knot, but I may actually have the quite easy stroke to splice the knot. Ailee told me that if you have your AF in storage you can actually get the item because you don't have it on you. If that is the case, then I can actually get my NIN hands, wait for the item from Temenos when it comes, upgrade the hands, and never look back. I still have to get 4 coffer keys for three MNK items, but hey, its a good solution to a future problem. I would like to get my Temple gear soon though because the buffs from it are pretty nice for XP because you just have to pop them on when they are used then you can take them off, and wear your normal gear.

Lunch update, told you this was going to be long, I am still on MNK.
Ok, I am back, lets wrap up MNK, shall we? I think the last thing I need to go over is the fact that I finished up my Hand-to-Hand merits, so I will be leveling into almost everything on my MNK at this point. I have also decided that subbing NIN is just plan sucks, I would rather sub WAR and make the healer spend more MP and kill the mob in half the time, than still pull hate go through 6 shadows and still take damage anyway.

Enough of my MNK, now onto other accomplishments. :) We have done several Kirins and have finally been able to tweak up some of the drops. Three Osode's have dropped, going to Glacian, Rygar and I, two N. Bodies going to Akanea and Aable, and one set of W. Legs which would have gone to Izman had he not been dealing with major virus issues, instead going to Achikasama for use on her RDM. :) Several Poles have dropped and been distributed, and we have actually cut down on the number of D. Bodies, only one in this time going to Sao. Our Kirin's are also getting faster, except for the one that we did on Earthsday and was being a pain in the ass. Apparently, it was still one of our fastest Kirins, but it kept doing very annoying things like Stonega IV the 1500+ Deadly Holds while you are putting shadows back up. It was just being annoying. Although the last one we did pulled a cut move of 2 houring then immediately casting Stonega IV. Killing maybe 8 or so people in the DD party. LOL Our poor DD party gets overwhelmed very quickly because they have no Barstonra and no Curaga to help recover, but on the fly we added a BLM to that party to assist with that and it does make a bit of a difference, but this wasn't until late into the second fight so not well tested until the next run. Kirin is one of the easiest mobs to tank in the game, as a tank can't really do anything about the damage they take from AoE's except try to minimize the damage and max out their HP. I still wear almost no haste gear and just HP and Enmity in general. Normally, for some reason the hate gets lopsided, usually because a tank has come in from a nasty move and is trying to catch up with the other tank most of the time, but Akanea is excellent at gaining hate and it was actually pretty funny watching Kirin bounce back and forth. Outside of Kirin, we have gotten a tiny bit of luck on Byakko, finally getting Akanea's Haidate for him. but still that makes us something like 1/10 on Byakko since Izman got his Haidate. Akanea was quite pleased, and it helps a lot on his SAM and NIN. We have also gained access for Sky for a good number of our Sky members, and they have joined us in Limbus. We have so many members now that we can do split runs, and we have had a very successful Omega, with another head (meh) and legs (yay). The head went to Kingscissom and the legs went to Eternalpain. We only need to get EP two more pieces so that he has a full set of Homam and he already has two of the hardest parts to get, body and legs. So once we get him some hands and feet, I will be plastering the blog with pics of him as the poster boy for Versus. As I was saying about people making Sea, just recently we have managed to get a great group of Versus members to Sea, and when you zone in apparently I give King a great old man mustache. It's great to have another group in Sea and even better that it is this group of people who have been great about dealing with all the struggles and late nights. :) Versus has been doing very well as of late, even claiming (way too early) Cerberus for the first time, unfortunately people from other LS's were massing and I claimed it too early. LOL Oh well, it was nice to have it for the minute or so that we did. :) We will be trying again, soon. In other smaller events, everyone is progressing very well in Assaults, and we even got a decent (read: not crap, R/E) drop from one of the runs. and we have a bunch of people that are very quickly ranking up. In fact I should hit rank 8 tonight, then just one more week and I should be able to get my Perdu Blade! Omoi already has rank 9 but doesn't have the Assault Points, which leads me to believe that I will be XPing a lot this week. LOL Finally onto Salvage, we still haven't been able to get a run were we get everyone to show up and take things down quickly, and none of the NM's have dropped anything yet. >.< But we are still plugging away and eventually we are going to get some good drops. :) We have gotten an Arrapago Card for future runs, but we still need a reason to go to another area and someday we will get a drop from Arrapago. Now that everyone has Sea access we have more free time to add another Salvage run. I am thinking about Noon-1PM on Saturdays, or Sundays. I will see what works with the people that are going.

I do want to note something I have noticed about Arrapago Remnants and the way drops work on the first floor. I have noticed this over several runs, but I think there may be some kind of pattern for which mobs will drop more of a certain kind of cell on the first floor.

Basically there are four wings to Arrapago floor 1. Two wings have bones, and two qutrubs. Two have one set of Lamia based on cell drops, the other two have a different set. I believe that one wing of the bones, and one wing of the qutrubs will have a better drop rate, as will one set of Lamia per cell drop set have a better drop rate.

I have noticed this pattern after many different runs were we will get either a ton of HP from the bones, or a ton of Weapons from the Qutrubs, sometimes both, sometimes neither, but the point was that its either almost all or almost nothing. Normally our pattern goes, clear the initial Qutrub/Lamia wing for weapons and magic, then depending on the group move to the other magic wing or move to the Bones/Lamia wing for HP and JA. We had almost everyone with HP and JA cells last night, and got almost no magic or weapons. This is just one night, but it matches many others. Sometimes lots of magic, or HP, or Weapons or JA, we just need to find the pattern.

As there are patterns to the other first floor drops, I was thinking it would not be outside the realm of possibility for this to happen. I have noticed this with or without TH2+ on different runs, so I am pretty sure it is more than just that. I have posted this on BG forums, but no response yet. Knowing BG, I will probably get a bunch of "There is no pattern, dumbass" comments from idiots that don't even do Salvage. Ah well, here's to hoping.

Now, onto the final subject for today. I have brought my RNG gear back out off of my mule and put it back onto my main. I plan on leveling it a little more often and because we have more and more tanks for events, using my SAM and RNG a little more often to get more use out of them and to let people come as other jobs. I want to try it out tonight in Limbus, if we don't do another Omega. Anyway, here are the builds I have, first my Archery build:

Gear recap:
Main: Fransisca
Off: Hawker's Knife
Ranged: Selene's Bow
Ammo: Demon Arrow
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Ranger's Necklace
Ear1: Drone Earring
Ear2: Drone Earring
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring1: Coral Ring
Ring2: Behemoth Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Precise Belt
Legs: Pahluwan Seraweels
Feet: Scout's Socks

Now, I know I have a bunch of ways that I can improve this gear set. For example, Hawker's Knife, Drone Earrings and the Coral Ring can all be upgraded. But I am still rather pleased with this gear set as it stands. When I do upgrade it, I will likely take out some Ranged Accuracy and AGI for STR and Ranged Attack. As much as I would like two Triumph Earrings or even a Vision Earring I can't spend money on it right now, when I need to save up for my Dryadic gear. I have always been a bit obsessed with accuracy and this is the case again here, though I am thinking about maybe full timing a Flame Ring instead of the Coral Ring too. Also, something else that I think is weird is that I use a Precise Belt and the Pahluwan Seraweels, while most people use Scout's Braccae and Royal Knight's Belt +1 or +2. Now, lets look at the collective benefit of those items:

My gear (relevent stats):
Ranged Accuracy: +9
STR: +3

Their gear (relevent stats):
HP: +18
Ranged Accuracy: +7
STR: +2
AGI: +2
Enmity: -2
Ranged Attack: +5 almost never.

Stat-wise, I beat them. :) STR is much more important for TP build than AGI for a RNG because of how RA are calculated. I win on ranged accuracy too, even adding in the AGI. They win on Enmity reduction, but come on, I care about that as much as I care about Ranged Attack +5 almost never. But, yes, I can definitely improve my set up, but I think I have better gear selection than them, in general.

As for my priorities on my RNG, a Woodville's Axe to start, Crimson Hands, which I have been passing up to people in the LS that need them and I will continue to do so until they are free lot. The improvements over the Ranger's Necklace are either small or very expensive. Finally, I would love, Love, LOVE and E bow. I want, want, want one, and will probably be doing some BCNM's to try to get one, maybe even try to get a V Bow after the next server reset.

Now for my other TP build set up, which can definitely be tweaked a bit more, my Holy Bolt set up.

The major difference here is just the Hunter's Braccae and Suzaku's Sune-ate, and obviously my Othinus' Bow and Holy Bolts (Slug Shot with Dark Steel bolts) but I can do a lot of more to build up MND, this would be a case were I could see using the Royal Knight's Belt +1, because then I am getting +2 MND, +2 STR and +2 AGI, then things get a little bit interesting. I have mentioned this before, but I think that it would be interesting to get Aqua Ring's. Two of them would be +10 MND and +4 STR, but giving but about +20 Accuracy, the problem is with my paranoia about accuracy how could I justify that? Then I figured it out! Bolts are much faster than arrows, so it would be like trying to make a Haste build for my NIN, where you pretty much sacrifice everything for Haste, because hitting faster makes up for just about everything else you lose, except in this case its increased damage on Light Damage procs for the occassional missed shot.

Finally, for my WS build:
Main: Fransisca
Off: Hawker's Knife
Ranged: Depends on the TP set.
Ammo: Depends on the TP set.
Head: Wyvern Helm
Neck: Breeze Gorget
Ear1: Drone Earring
Ear2: Minuet Earring
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring1: Flame Ring
Ring2: Rajas Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Precise Belt
Legs: Pahluwan Seraweels
Feet: Rutter Sabatons

Now for this I feel much better about this, obvious improvements are still a Royal Knight's Belt +1, that Woodville's Axe and those Triumph Earrings, outside of that, I am pretty well set up for my WS's, all STR all the time. LOL That's it for RNG, I might do WAR which I am less impressed with next week, or maybe a NIN or DRG recap.

Anyway, I would like to say that it is nice to be back, and I hope you enjoy.