Recovery.

I was out the end of the last week because I was sick, so I have a lot to cover since then. First, Versus stuff. We did another JoL, actually we were supposed to do two but another LS rushed to spawn one just so they could do it before us. It's the kindly people that really make this game great for me. LOL Anyway, just a Love Torque dropped which makes it the second most torques from one sea NM after Faith, I believe. orz Outside of that I have been doing quite a few ZNM as of late, well, at least been trying to do a couple more of them in my limited spare time. They are all pretty fun to do an the tier 3 ones definitely have some difficulty attached to them. I am looking forward to helping Iz get those Aurum Sabatons and some other gear that is pretty decent from the whole system. Apparently, there was a bug in the system that let you spawn a test mob that SE left in the game but that has been removed, and hopefully someone will be able to spawn the top NM if SE gives them their pop item back. The most difficult mob we have done so far has been Armed Gears. Let me rephrase, this isn't a difficult mob so much as a strange mob. It is a RDM caster but can use Mighty Strikes. It will cast en-spells constantly which determines its weakness of the element that is strong to it's en-spell. If it is dispelled it will move into either light or dark modes where it will be able to cure itself and become highly resistant to damage, even more so than normal. Normally, it is still very resistant to damage. Now the interesting things here is that it hardly ever uses TP moves even when feed a lot of TP, but I believe that we were able to determine that the Antigravity move was at least a partial hate reset. So we decided to kite it during these times to prevent the healer from taking too much hate. It also had another move called Heavy Armature which gave it a huge number of shadows and an Invincible effect for some time. Our basic strategy was to use skillchains and magic burst with the magic to which it was currently weak. Even with this strategy it is still a rather long fight just to get it to 50%. Once it is at 50% it will lose a gear and become slightly weaker in defense but not much in offense. Finally at 25% it will become rather weak to melee and magic and is pretty easy to finish off, unlike many other mobs in this game. Offensively, even though it doesn't use TP moves very often and they are generally pretty weak, it still hits like a bus. It was hitting a very well geared PLD/WAR for 200-300 per hit, but it doesn't hit very fast so it was manageable. Drops are generally very good from the tier 3 ZNM's, and the two times that we killed it we have gotten the Aurum Sabatons and the Oracle's hands, along with other grips. We have also done Nuhn on the third tier, which is also rather easy and is just a kited fight in general, with the only important note being that it spams Death Gnash (1HP left and hate reset) at low health, which turned out to be pretty good for us because it would use that on someone that pulled hate then switch back to the tanks. Good drops there too, including the Enkidu's hands and the Oracle's feet. Personally, I have gotten a Blood Ring an Insect Ring and a Hissho Hachimaki. This Hissho Hachimaki is now part of my Asuran Fists macro and I am quite happy with it overall. :)

I have done a myriad of other short but sweet events lately, including some relatively uneventful Salvages save for Crlmsonking getting a Marduk body 35 piece from one of the frogs in Zhayolm, while Hiryo is still waiting on his Usukane head 25 piece to complete his piece. I have completed the new Wings missions which were disappointingly short compared to what SE claimed they would be, but they were still amazing to watch and enjoy and I can't wait until we learn more about Cait Sith and the Walk of Echoes. I even got to level my WHM a bit even though it is still just 61 and get some more meriting done in my spare time. Also, I need to complete my rank up in the past because I will soon lose my current badge. I do like the new system for Campaign tags and I plan on using that on my WHM at least weekly to get more XP for it. I really feel like I should finish it up because there are other jobs I want to move onto now. :)

Tomorrow! The real return of On the Cheap for Monks! It should be concluded then too! And I will post it all together in one rather long post so that people can follow it there. :)