After the beginning.

I like research. I like understanding and taking the time to understand the nature of any activity I do. This may be why I have spend a large amount of my academic and professional career focused on research or it may be that my focus in my academic and professional career has led me to a love of research. Either way, I love delving into the minutiae of anything that I decide to become involved with, and this usually leads me down the road of obsessing over everything I decided to do, for good or ill. Sometimes, I can recognize when I am in over my theoretical head, for example, I have a rudimentary knowledge of damage calculations, but I could not simply look at a series of damage indicators and find the potential pDIF of the weapon. I am glad that other people have determined the formulas already and I can just plug in what I need to know to come up with an answer. Honestly, I don't know how people can not become obsessed with these numbers and it may explain why I see so many people that are strangely equipped. I mean, I know that not everyone else wants to understand formulas or even try to crunch the numbers, but how can they not follow the advice of those that do. I see people running around in gear that I would be embarrassed to wear, not just for other people to see me but for my own pride. The reality of all this is that I probably take things far too seriously, but I am also obsessed, I just think that the balance of people would want to know something about what they are doing. I mean even when I was leveling my DRG, I knew at some point I wanted to get better gear and end-game gear even when I knew that the selection for DRG was limited.

Anyway, I think my point is that the more that people pay attention to the game the more they get obsessed and obsessed players are usually good players (unless they are intentionally lasy, but if they were then they wouldn't really be obsessed anymore just jaded) but they also lose focus and get angry and grumpy a lot too, if a normal person who is not as obsessed as they are doesn't have the same goals and desires. While the normal player may think that the obsessed player is, well, obsessed and needs to take a step back. Either way, there is a gap in understanding. Well, that is the game as it is in life.

So, I have been considering how we are going to approach Kirin today after the update to the two-handers and I think it will almost definitely improve our kill time. I think that most two-handers should consider going /THF and just eating Sushi and there will be little risk that they won't be able to build TP normally. The first mini-god might be a little more difficult because they wont have TP stored up for the initial skillchain but with the increase in damage output and the general weakness of the mini's it shouldn't be much of a concern. I am hoping that we will be able to down Kirin in under 45 minutes even without skillchains. With Iz gone, we should be looking at 1 if not 2 W. Legs dropping, honestly, if 2 W. Legs drop I would even consider logging him in so that we could get them. LOL I would seriously cry if two legs dropped tonight even if it would be a very good thing. :)

I think I finally have a little bit of support for doing another Salvage run on Tuesday nights after Sky, hehehe. This is going to just be another farming Arrapago run, and I might start using Sunday as our bigger day and starting to do Bhaflau to expand our operations. Well, all I know right now is that Borin, Omoi and I are in for the run. LOL I got home last night and not very many people were on, so I still need to check with the others, but I am definitely not going to require people to come on this run, but after the last run, I am so much more confident in our ability to farm Arrapago even with fewer people. Also, learning to do a run with fewer people will make the larger run even more effective. Achi has told me that Exolo should be back on relatively soon because he finally got his internet at school all set up. Ultimately, I just think that with the incredibly low drop rates in Arrapago we will need to farm it as much as possible.

Working toward improving our Salvage run, I have been continuing to level my MNK, and after some soloing with help from Omoi, then I got a party with a pretty bad set up that resulted in one of our two WHM's dying on the 5th mob, then back to soloing for a bit and finally a decent party that was a little too high for the area that we were xping in so the leveling went pretty slow. On top of that the BLM leader of the party feel asleep about halfway through and the JP RDM decided they had to leave and immidiately DC in the middle of a fight, so the last three mobs we had to do with 4 people, but all turned out well and I got 63 on my MNK. Lately it has been near impossible to find a tank or healer after about 6PM EST. Does no one do late night XP sessions anymore? ; ; Ailee and I were waiting around almost an hour and we got exactly zero people to join a party. :( I think I am going to try again Friday night after Assault, but that may be all I get for the weekend because I will be gone all Saturday into Sunday morning.

Thats it for today, I liked this blog, I didn't have much to go over but I got a little theory/personal philosophy in there and I think that is what I am best at writing in general. To close, this is what you get from Omoi and her obsession with her alter ego.