Cure? What is that?

I never thought it would happen to me, but it finally has. I've been burnt out of playing the role of healer, specifically on my WHM. For the past few months, all my event linkshells have needed me to come as WHM. I've rarely had the chance to play on my PLD or my RDM, which is really unfortunate considering that i've managed to merit out my RDM by a lot.

I remember when I first started the game, and me and Xean were just creating TheBrotherhood our social LS, I would go out to West Ronfaure and look for new players and PL them a little and help them out. I'd invite them into our LS, and from there help teach them the ropes of the game. Sadly though, as time went by it became very rare to actually find "new" players. Most of the lvl 1-10 players in West Ronfaure were often mules or just veteran players lvling a new job. There wasn't really much help I could provide other than PLing, and so I eventually stopped looking for new recruits to our shell this way.

But the point of this story is that I reaaaaaally liked having my WHM at lvl 30 at that time. I liked healing, and keeping people alive and helping them that way. I sometimes would go out and help PL linkshell members if they had a bad party setup and needed a little backup healing. I honestly WANTED to get my WHM to 75, so that I would be more helpful to my LS members.

But ever since I started joining endgame and having people always request my WHM, i've found that i've started cringing whenever I hear "Pls bring WHM". I really don't like sitting in the back and just tossing out hastes and cures. I don't mind when we fight gods and other mobs that require me to be quick with other spells (erase, bar spells etc) but for the most part, I would much rather be in on the action, doing something TO the mob rather than just keeping my pt members alive. Plus I really miss the battle music, in a lot of the zones where I end up, there's never any music... stupid SE -_-

So yeah, i'm really hoping that once I finish with my 2 DD jobs: SAM & WAR, that maybe my event shells will allow me to bring something other than WHM. The only downside to all this is that I can't rely on my RR3, and often endgame events get expensive for melees because of the meds you have to bring >_<. Oh well, if I can at least take a small break i'll be happy.

So speaking of my DD jobs, i've managed to get WAR to 72. I was hoping that i'd have it at 75 before I fly down to spend christmas with Xean (next thursday) but because of the US holiday this week (thanksgiving) most of my static is going to be away and busy so we won't be lvling this thursday or saturday. And then next thursday, well i'm flying out. But hopefully i'll have it at 75 in the two weeks that follow, our static generally gets one lvl per session.

And for my SAM, well thats been a bit of a challenge to get invites on. I'm adequately geared, but I just never seem to be seeking when others around my lvl range are. And considering that most people just merit these days, usually there's maybe only 1-2 parties lvling anyways so waiting to be invited as a replacement isn't the most reliable way to get a party invite. Oh well, my SAM is almost at 64 and i'm sure i'll get it to 75 eventually. I definitely have found SAM to be more enjoyable to play than my WAR, mainly because there's more to do on the job. I like keeping busy.

As for regular updates, I finished getting 8/8 on my enfeebling for my RDM. I was going to get 8/8 for elemental magic, but because of how long it takes I decided to put that on the backburner for a while and work on my WHM merits. Started working on my Cure Recast time, and now i'm down to the last upgrade for that.

Unfortunately my crafting has kinda been slow. I started to pick up clothcraft a few weeks back, but because of the cost of gear upgrades me and Xean have needed (got him his Blau Dolch recently with the gil we had been saving up for the last couple of months on my mule) I've decided i'd wait for a bit. I really do want to get all my crafts to 60 one day, but I know the cost to put into that will add up. Usually i'm pretty good with cutting down the cost by a lot though, because I try to farm up my ingredients when i'm crafting. I really can't put more than 50k into crafting without seeing it come back. And though i'm sure I could make some gil crafting lower lvl items, I often find that farming will get me more gil per hr than crafting would. There's a lot of time you have to put into crafting for gil >_<

Other than that, I decided to quit my Sea linkshell Prowess. There were some good players in the LS, and I was mainly there to help my friend get some gear but the shell itself has been deteriorating. 2 of our last JoL's were completely wasted because we had two people call for help during the fights. I was never able to stay until the end because I have limbus (and for some reason people take over an hour to gather together even though the start time is always listed in the ls msg -_-) I think that the moral of the LS really dropped, because our last session we didn't even have 12 people show up. I really can't see the LS continueing, its only a matter of time before it breaks with so many people leaving and I think I would rather be doing something else more productive and enjoyable. I told my friend of course that if they ever need me for something really big, that he can always call on me and i'll help out. But I just don't want to put in the time for an event that i'm not having fun with. Sea seems more like a headache to progress in, than any other endgame event i've tried. Maybe it was just the LS, the people in the LS... i'm not sure but for now Sea won't be one of my focuses.
On a good note though, I got to play PLD on Kirin with KeitaroAeon. They were a little short on PLDs and asked me to come up and tank, which was fun... except that Suzaku seems to really enjoy one shotting me. Whether i'm fighting him as a mini, or as a god I always seem to get killed by the stupid bird (and no, i'm not wearing Bomb Queen Ring). But its all good, as long as we get through the fight in the end I'm not too worried about my deaths. Plus when I was kiting Kirin on our last run, I think I had the longest "kite" time and stayed alive, hehe. I think that time Xean had come as WHM (lol) and thats probably the reason why. He's always on top of things and keeping me healed.


Last thing I can think to write about is that i've decided to get my SMN to lvl 40. A lot of our LS members in TBH are wanting to setup CoP statics, and i'd really like to help out when I can. I know that for some fights, SMN is a great job to have for the BCNMs so I managed to get together some LS members and we lvled in Crawler's Nest. I got my SMN to 38, so only 2 more lvls to go and then it'll be ready.

Busy, busy, busy.

For the last two weeks, i've been doing a lot in the game. So much that I haven't really allowed myself to do a lot else, like updating this blog. <_<

Well to start, TheBrotherhood finally got our last SMN Alianne his Ying Yang Robe. Alianne had gotten the ToD, and for once the spawn time for Shikigami happened to be at a decent time. (His window always seemed to open in the early AM for me and Xean -_-) So on a Saturday morning, our LS gathered out in Ro'Maeve and we camped the NM against a few other groups. Xean ended up getting the claim after Shaolina had spotted the NM on his widescan, and from there we all gathered to help him bring it down. And lucky for Alianne, because the YYR dropped on the first go.


Right after we killed Shiki, Zeo asked for some help on the weaponskill NM for GreatAxe, so those of us who were free went out into The Sanctuary of Zhi'tah and took down the tree. Was a very easy fight, not much of a challenge ; ;


For the rest of the week, me and Xean did a lot of various lvling on different jobs. He wanted to bring his DRK to 37 to use as a subjob on his NIN for sky events, so I helped PL him to 28. As usual, he sported his shiny subligar =P


After he hit lvl 28, I joined up with him on my THF and we took both jobs to 37 within a matter of 3 days. We had quite a bit of luck with our parties after Kazham, always seeming to gain a lvl at least within an hour if not less. And because of this, it freed up a lot of time for us to be able to merit.

Some merit pts we did with our LS members, and others were pickup parties. Though I managed to finally get Protect/Shell V for my WHM as well as devotion, getting those merits seemed tedious at times, especially the last merit pt that we had. We had a BRD who didn't want to pull, which was fine because our THF volunteered to do the job. But it only got worse from there.... our BRD wouldn't finale the mamools we were fighting, wouldn't really help with erasing, wouldn't sleep links (until the party was nearly wiped), wouldn't keep songs up (i'd say I had ballad maybe 60% of the time) and the list goes on. Sometimes I wonder how people manage to get to 75 and not be at least "decent" at what they're suppose to do -_-

And we have also pretty much started a LS static with our WAR and THF. Timwakefield is our PLD, Alianne is our BRD and depending on when available, we have Tiaybara as another THF, Shaoulin as RNG and Falk as WHM. These parties aren't always "super xp" but the atmosphere is pretty relaxing. Whenever there's a death, there's never any yelling or insults being shot back and forth, and its just nice to be able to party with other players that do their job well, and are also geared accordingly. So far we've maned to get our jobs to lvl 69, so hopefully before the end of November we'll be at 75.


I also managed to finally participate in a beseiged for the first time in months. I never seem to catch these, and though i'm not a fan of the event, I do like getting skillups, xp and some imperial standing. I actually enjoyed this last beseiged, mainly because all my enfeebles were landing.... well, that is until I met up with this guy:


At first I thought I might of accidentally changed one of my .dats but after checking, I found out that this guy is one of the NMs. I wasn't able to do a whole lot to him, though every once in a while one of my enfeebles stuck.

As for the endgame activities, I recently joined my friend's sea LS Prowess. I really don't find myself eager to get any of the gear I "could" earn, nor do I find sea all that appealing as far as the farming goes. I know its pretty much the same as Sky, but I just don't really find myself enjoying it a lot. For now i'll stick around and help when I can (lately i've had to leave early for limbus, and on the other farming day I have to do errands in RL) and hope that at least my friend can get a little closer to getting some of the gear he wants. I think i'm mostly attending for that reason, because I just don't feel as interested as I thought I would in earning anything.

Sky has been going really good. I managed to get my Rostrum pumps (thanks KA!!!) and the only item I now need for my PLD/RDM/WHM would be the W.Abjuration legs. Eventually i'll be working towards getting my SAM and WAR some gear, but being that I can't equip anything yet because they aren't even lvl 70+, i'm going to wait.

Then there's Limbus which has seemed to be really good to me lately. Together me and Xean saved up 75 coins to get him his brutal earring, and now he's going to help me get coins to upgrade my PLD feet, and also my loquacious earring. I also have the items to upgrade a RDM and SA AF, but these aren't yet priorities compared to the others ^^;

Last thing that is worth noting.... well actually one of the two last things.... Xean got his sirocco from Kreutzet. We had camped the NM late one night with some LS members, but he never popped. Then Xean got the ToD the next morning, and so the following night we had a bunch of LS members come help him kill the bird, and he went 1/1. Seems his luck has changed, because Carste went 1/6 on that stupid bird ; ;

And so onto the last thing.... me and a few other LS members killed Bune! This is a wyvern NM in Gustav Tunnel, I believe around lvl 80ish. Timwakefield and Carste were with us (we were there to do the another WS NM for Carste) and the first time we ended up wiping because we didn't exactly buff before the fight, but after raising we managed to kill him. Unfortunately no drop.

Chains of Promathia: Complete!

After more than 2 years of playing, I have finally been able to mark one other "to do" off my list. I've finally been able to complete the Chains of Promathia missions! For a lot of people, completing CoP isn't the biggest accomplishment in this game, especially considering that the expansion is a couple of years old if I remember correctly... but for some, like myself... being able to find a group of people that are able to commit themselves to doing the missions with you is a huge obstacle of its own.

I remember when I first started the missions, the Promyvions I was able to get a group of random people needing them. Some of the names that I remember from the original static we had were Dowzer and Tonicfly. It was so long ago that really the only thing I do remember is that on our first promyvion, our party had gotten aggro on the last floor and we didn't have reraise at the time, so we had to HP and start all over again. Dowzer had already completed these, but had offered to help us and had been really nice about waiting. And with everyone's help, me and Xean went 1/1 on all the promyvions.

For a while, we didn't go any further with our missions but instead created a weekly LS CoP Promyvion static, where we would have our LS members sign up and we would create a party to get them their promyvions done. We did these for several months, maybe 5... but eventually me and Xean had to take a break because with all the muling for the gear, and sometimes having to find last minute replacements because some people didn't show up, became too much of a headache. I'm sure now that i'm done with the missions and have had a really long break I might set this up again, but so far our members all seem to be beyond the promyvions >_<

Anyways, a while later one of our LS leaders Sirivalin had decided to make a static within our LS to obtain Sea access. Unfortunately me and Xean didn't sign up in time, so there weren't any open positions for us. However, a while later two of their static members (Suko and Susuki) had decided to take a break from the game (wish they'd come back, miss those two tarus ; ;) which gave me and Xean the opportunity to join in. So Sirivalin, Alianne, Kiersten, and Evanai (Lokelani) helped me and Xean catch up in the missions and for a good couple of months, we would meet up every saturday and progress in CoP.


Along the way there were a few breaks, which everyone was really good about. We all were understanding that RL priorities come first, and so we took a relaxed and slow approach with the missions completing them whenever all 6 of us could meet up.

Soon though, our great static was about to become like most CoP statics... broken. Sirivalin and Evanai had been a couple for about a year (maybe more) and due to some differences, that changed right after we had finished mission 8.0 and received our Sea Access. Because of their breakup, Sirivalin didn't feel the desire to play the game anymore and decided to quit FFXI to pursue other things and also take care of some other things in RL.

When this happened, the 5 of us decided we would continue and that we'd get a friend of ours Anderoc to help with the remainder of the missions. But things never seemed to fall into place, there was some drama that took place in the LS and things just fell apart... one of our members left the LS, and another continued on their own with the missions. It was only Alianne, Xean and myself left and finding 3 people to help with the missions was just too much of a hassle at the time.

So finally, 2 weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine Gimli who had previously offered to help out with CoP missions (he was only 2 missions ahead of us). I then posted on QCDN hoping to get some more people, and had Evanai request to join up again. So all I needed to do was ask Anderoc, and then everything was a go again. Our plan was to work for 2 consecutive Saturday evenings on the last of the missions, and finally complete CoP.

For once, things didn't go as planned but instead of going badly, they went great. We managed to go from 8.1 - End all in one night. We all met up, and started killing the Aerns on mission 8.2 which I managed to actually prolong because I had forgotten to get one of the cutscenes after killing the NMs, which meant we had to backtrack and fight again >_<

Lucky for me, no one was upset and we killed them easily anyways. We then progressed with 8.2 which we also lucked out on, because there was an alliance of about 10 people also doing the mission where we would have to navigate the Palace of HuXzoi and lead an NPC through. Then we would have to climb these towers inside that corresponded to the races within our group in order to get a key item for the upcoming BCNM. Because we had joined up with the alliance, we were able to get this done pretty fast and efficiently killing mostly everything that aggroed or was in our path. I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to do this mission with only 6 people, but I know it would of taken FOREVER.

Finally when we were ready to do the BCNM for 8.3, I took a chance and asked the other group if we could borrow their BLM because according to all the information online, the fight required an Elemental Seal + Sleepga 2 because we would be fightin 4 Magic pots (BLM and RDM types). Bran, their BLM was more than happy to help us out but we had to wait for their group to go first (And Anderoc offered to sit out for the fight because he had already completed the missions). Their first attempt was a failure, and before they could give it a second try another party out of no where ran up and entered without even trying to make some kind of order of which party could enter first, based on who had been there longer. So after that party failed, we let their group try a second time which again they didn't win. So their group said that we could have a chance to try, but again before we had a chance to enter the BCNM the 3rd group that had already "budged" the first time did it again leaving us to wait outside until they were done. I think we waited about 1.45 hrs before we were finally able to enter the BCNM -_-

So when we zoned in, we did our usual buffs and had everyone take out the two BLM pots first before we would intentionally wipe. After we reraised, we took out the last two RDM pots and got ourselves our win! Considering that the other two parties hadn't been able to win the BCNM with their setup, we were really relieved at getting the 1/1 win. So we decided to stay up for the rest of the night and complete the last BCNM.

The last fight, was a lot of fun. We had a friend Cix come and help out, who gave us some helpful information about the fight seeing as he had already finished CoP. Before we entered though... I HAD to take some pictures! Xean really thinks i'm crazy with my photo taking obsession..... but.... I can't help it! I like looking back on these and remembering things like this.

I also managed to take a few cutscene shots as we entered the BCNM where we would have to fight Promathia in two forms. The first one was relatively easy, took a bit of figuring out for me personally though because at first glance the BCNM looks smaller than it really is. We had Gimli kite Promathia as the rest of us helped take him down while keeping Sel'theus and Prishe alive, who also helped us during the fight. The second form seemed to be even easier, because I remember only getting in two nukes and on my third go, everything froze and I sat there going through the chat log afraid that we had somehow wiped when really we had won, lol. Poor Cix though, he had died at the last second right as Promathia did, so he never got his 2000 xp bonus >_<


After the fight we gave our congrats to everyone and said good night, for me and Xean it was 2am, but for most of the others it was 4am int he morning x_x

And the next day me and Xean went to complete the MANY cutscenes which more or less just told you what happened to all the characters involved in the story. Then there was a final cutscene which I really enjoyed, that you get in Lufaise Meadows. There's a song with vocals playing, and during the entire cutscene you can't see any LS chat at all, so I guess its equivalent to an FMV. There were some nice scenes which I of course took pics of ^^


So finally I went and got myself a Rajas Ring. The day before I had been 100% sure I was going to get the Tamas ring for my RDM and WHM, but after doing some more thinking I figured that the Tamas Ring could be replaced by macroing in other rings, where as the Rajas couldn't. There wasn't really anything similar to the Rajas ring and seeing as my WAR and SAM are nearing 75, I figured it would better for me to pick up the Rajas instead. And so far, i'm loving it!

Well that's pretty much it for this update. The whole experience had some fun moments, and some annoying moments... I remember our Airship fight was the longest, we had used our 2hrs and because we went 1/3, that mission alone took an entire day because we had to wait for our 2hrs to be available. I'm really glad to finally have this done, but the only thing I dislike is that because the missions were so drawn out, and never happened consecutively I really have zero clue as to what the storyline was about. I know bits and pieces but I really don't understand it. Guess i'm going to have to go online and see if anyone has written down the story -_-

And decided to leave you with a few scenic pics I took which I really like. If I have time, I might do something with the full size versions in photoshop.

The Way of the Samurai

Well I finally finished questing all my SAM AF, so I guess now the only thing left is to get the job to 75. Questing the AF was probably the most annoying thing i've experienced in this game so far.... well actually, there's probably worse but still. Getting my AF3 done was the longest out of all the quests. When I completed my AF2 mission, I had to wait a full day (until JP midnight) in order to flag the AF3 mission. Then, when I flagged that mission I had to do a lot of running around... to and from Norg. Finally when I was ready to do the actual fight, I managed to luck out and have a few LS members give me a hand. I usually plan things like this ahead of time, because I hate asking "at the spur of the moment" but my friend Anderoc also needed to redo the quest (I think he had upgraded his AF and wanted to be able to store the NQ set) so I asked in LS half expecting everyone to be busy... but I lucked out and had Arimis, Sabene, Alianne and Clarisse come help.

But that wasn't the end.... nope, after I was finished with the fight, I had to go back to Norg, trade an item (SE loves finding ways to get us to spend our gil in game -_-) and then wait ANOTHER 24 hrs before I would get my AF. Ugh.

Well once I was done getting all my AF, I set out on my little mission to lvl as much as possible. Only that didn't really happen the way I had hoped. I had a lot of commitments in the evenings that prevented me from being able to seek during the peak NA hours.... and a lot of the time I would have to do some errands in RL so with what time I did have left to seek for party, I usually just spent it with my flag up, sitting in my moghouse.

Some parties were great, while others were just horrendous. I remember one party I had, the leader didn't even know what mobs we were suppose to be fighting and kept insisting that we fight crawlers in Aydeewa which were at least 3 lvls above our own. I would tell the leader this, but he didn't listen and it took 2 fights (both taking 7 minutes each) before the party and leader agreed that perhaps the mobs were too high for us -_-

But I did finally manage to get lvl 60 yesterday which I was really happy about. As soon as I hit lvl 59 the day before, I noticed that my dmg was MUCH better than it had been before. My weaponskills could go as high as 700-800, and on average did about 300. My hits alone were better than before, making me quite happy to be DD for once. I reaaaaally can't wait until I have both SAM and WAR at 75, i'd much rather play on these jobs for events than WHM. I never get to go as RDM (which is a pity considering thats where all my merits are) and so maybe if I have a DD available I can start playing that instead.

As for what else i've been up to recently, I decided to help out some LS members get sky again. We've set up a static, and managed to get ZM4 and ZM5 completed in one night. The fights were very easy, and as usual we had some good laughs. I much prefer doing missions and quests with my ls members than with pick up groups, you don't have to worry about people getting lost, getting aggro and then dying. It does happen from time to time, but very rarely. We'll be completing the rest of the missions until they get sky this coming Sunday, which i'm looking forward to. Being apart of this is always fun, because this is one of the "steps" you have to take in the game to progress into endgame and I just really enjoy being there to help along the way.


I also helped out Alianne with his BLU spells recently. He needed a bunch from high lvl mobs in ToAU areas, so we had to get together some other LS members. Carste, Arimis, Sabene and Shaoulin came along to help. For the most part, the spells were learnt pretty quick but we did have a couple that took more work. Some of the mobs required that you damage their weapon/tusk which could ONLY be done by hitting them with a critical hit. Only after that had been done, would the mob use their tp spell that Alianne needed to learn. Why does SE make things so annoying? -_-


As for my endgame activities, i've been doing pretty well recently. My limbus shell has won every zone we've done so far, and within 2 consecutive runs I picked up both PLD AF+1 items, so I went ahead and trading those in the other night so that I can obtain Gallant Surcoat +1. The downside is that i'm only left with 20 Ancient Beastcoins now, so I have to do a lot more in order to get my Loquacious Earring ; ; Oh well, i'll get it eventually, lol.

And last week in Sky I was asked to come as PLD. I got to tank a couple of gods, and NMs which was pretty fun. I've been a bit hesitant to come as PLD because I don't carry any HP gear (I really don't believe in HP gear unless its for Spirits Within) and I haven't actually been able to obtain any of the Koenig or other sky gear for PLD yet, so I never felt "equipped enough". But after tanking Genbu (which I ended up getting KO'ed at) I did manage to get the M. Hands abjuration so that wasn't too bad. Guess I had to make a sacrifice in order to get something from the big ugly turtle, lol.


And I think the funnest NM to tank was Suzaku. He did end up one shotting me and the other PLD, so we had a THF kite him around a bit and right as my unweakened status wore, I was able to get hate back on the bird and we finished him off. We didn't get many gear drops from him, but I believe we did get 3 gil items! All in all, it was a fun night and now all I can hope for is that I might get asked to come as PLD more often, because I am sooooooooo sick of WHM >_<
Oh yeah, and as for Dynamis RidersOfRohan is doing exceptionally well. We've recruited more BLMs and they are definitely the ammo of our LS, lol. I'm glad that we have committed people in the LS now, because we're doing great during our runs and now its only a matter of time before we get our Windurst win and look at heading to Northlands. I'm just glad my "ugh Dynamis" phase is over and that i'm enjoying the event again. Our last run had a few laughs, we had pulled the NM and because we hadn't done San d'Oria in a long time, some of the melee forgot that they weren't suppose to engage the NM and so many of us were charmed. As you can see below, there's the group of us chasing each other. I was the only one who got slept in time, lol. I think we had 5 AF drop from this last run and one Montiont Silverpiece which I won the lot on (lol there's a first for everything).


And last, I figured i'd post a couple of pics that I took during a Beseiged event. I had just zoned in to the city from an xp party that disbanded, when I saw these little frogs hopping around. So of course, out went my Soboro and off I went to slaughter them all. Of course I barely hit them because of my lvl, but it was still fun. I was just lucky I didn't get turned into a frog, I'm pretty sure a few other people did.


Oops, almost forgot... my sky LS did a KS99 run 2 weeks ago. We did the Wyrm KSNM99, which was really fun.... except for the massive deaths.... <_<


Apparently you need a couple of BLMs, and well, apparently we didn't have enough ; ;. We managed to get the wyrm down to 15% but while he was in flight, he had decimated most of our alliance on both attempts that we did. Our second attempt was better, we managed to get him to land after being in flight but I guess people stopped "trying" thinking that the battle had been won at that point, and that cost us the win because he managed to wipe us all again. It was definitely a good practice, but a loss for the two people who had used orbs ; ;

Sabene & Arimis' wedding ^^

This past saturday, two in game friends of mine finally had their "FFXI wedding". A little over a month ago, my friend Sabene mentioned that she wanted to have an ingame wedding with her rl husband, Arimis. They were looking for someone to be the chaperon (SE requires a third person to submit the application) and so I volunteered.

After sending in the application for their wedding, I received a response from SE saying it had been accepted which was really strange considering me and Xean had waited months to have ours accepted. But anyways, I was glad it was accepted right away and that they didn't have to continue applying.

So here's how the wedding went...

I waited outside the Bastok Lighthouse which is where the wedding was to be held. The wedding GM Mefoele contacted me and told me she would be ready shortly, and to have the guests wait nearby. When Sabene and Arimis arrived, all 3 of us were teleported to the roof of the lighthouse where the GM went over the ceremony and rules with us. I was then taken back to where the guests were waiting, and went over everything with them.

Finally when the wedding was ready, the GM teleported us all to the top and we took our positions, lining up with the stairs in two rows that the bride and groom, and myself would walk through. Everything was going great, but I did have to get a reminder from the GM to /cheer on Sabene after I took my spot in the line because I had momentarily forgot. >_<;

The ceremony itself was a little corny, what I would call your "typical" wedding that you see on television. But the one thing I did like for this style of wedding was that Sabene and Arimis had been able to submit their favorite quotes, which were said during the ceremony. I think Bastok needs a little bit of originality to their wedding ceremonies, hehe.

After Sabene and Arimis were pronounced husband and wife, the guests were asked to make a toast so we all drank a bottle of juice. Then we got to set off fire crackers and job abilities as a way to celebrate the end of the event. Before we were teleported to the bottom of the lighthouse, we were able to take a few pictures which I have here:


When the ceremony was over, Sabene and Arimis asked us all to get lvl 1 jobs, because we were going to do a naked race to Jeuno. Right before though, myself and Xean gave Arimis and Sabene some wedding gifts, because you can't let them have a wedding and not get a little something on their special day ^^. I had crafted a Gateau aux Fraises (Bastokan Cake) and signed it for Sabene, and included a stack of Angel Wing fireworks. Xean gave Arimis a crafted and signed Tarutaru desk, a stack of Muteppo fireworks and for giggles... a bowl of leech saliva XD

So shortly after, we prepared and got ready for the race!

At first I was in the lead, but me being... well me, I had to take pictures and that caused me to lag so I fell behind in third! And anytime we zoned, i'd fall even more behind because my connection has always been aweful for zoning >_<

But thats ok, I managed to get into second, behind a player named Kanash. When we were about half way through Pashlow Marshlands though, we took one of the routes that had very little room to go around mobs and there was this one goblin up ahead. I thought for sure Kanash would aggro, and he should have but for whatever reason the goblin didn't see him and instead got me, and one shotted me with drain ; ; So I HPed, and took the airship to Jeuno to wait for everyone else.

When we were done with the race, we decided to do a lvl 10 capped ballista fight at Ghelsba Outpost. I went as MNK/PUP, thinking if I had the little puppet it would help me some. Of course seeing as the job was lvl 1, and I had never touched it... I had no clue that there was a 20 minute recast time to summon it, and so I only managed to bring the stupid thing out twice during our entire event, only to see it die in seconds -_-

Xean had gone DRG for fun, he wasn't really planning on playing seriously but more for laughs and wanted to see his DRG get annihilated because he hates the job so much. I still have a hard time believing he even got the job to lvl 11, lol.

Anyways we had a lot of fun with this, I managed to kill Spalko, Arimis and even Xean... mwahahaha...

but of course....

I also ate dirt more than once <_<

And the best part was that Sabene, the bride scored our team some points too. She was actually pretty good, lol. Its just too bad that the cap was set so low, because there wasnt a lot of options to use when you wanted to take another player out. Oh well, it was fun and definitely time well spent with the LS.

After the ballista, Sabene and Arimis had to logout so I went to go seek on SAM. About 20 minutes later I got asked to help Xean's brother Sethidus with an NM in the Temple of Ugaleppih, a little treant type mob. When we first pulled it though, I think he got off a double attack or something because Xean's shadows were gone and before I could get off a haste or even a cure, the mob killed Xean so we had to zone. When we went back to pull it again, we decided to leave Xean's health at full because the last time I had left him in yellow so he could activate the latent on his haste ring. Second round was an easy win, and we decided to farm the opo-opo crown quest items for the rest of the night. I'm still needing the Ten of Coins card, but i'll wait a while before I try farming that seeing as it has a stupid drop rate.

And other than that, i've just been lvling SAM again. Finally hit lvl 50, but I have to say I really don't like pickup parties anymore. I'm hoping that I can stay caught up with Anderoc's static because all my pickup parties i've had lately are more annoying than fun. It took me more than 2 hrs to get 7k in one party, and all the while i've been trying to do skill chains with other melees but they don't seem to comprehend "Please announce your tp if I announce mine". I hate sitting on TP as SAM, and if the other melee doesn't have 100% or near full, i'd rather use a weaponskill than get 200% tp while I wait for the other melee to be ready to skill chain -_-

Oh, and in other news.... Ose still refuses to drop his assault jerkin. Me and some other ls members went out to help our friend Standpoint get the drop for his DRG. I only managed to make one pop as I had sky earlier, but I heard that for the entire night they went 0/3. My experience so far is 0/6, and I don't get how some people say they're 1/1 on him. The good thing is that we did manage to get another decent THF dagger for Josudes though, when we killed Soulstealer Skullpix. He just took 3hrs to spawn........

And so today, I plan to start on my AF which I believe is mostly useless, maybe get a bit of xp in and... as of this moment, i'm currently waiting for stupid Kreutzet to pop for my friend Carste. We've tried getting this NM to drop a really good dagger for THF, but we've had something like 0/5. The worst part is Kreutzet is a 9-12hr respawn, and only spawns during wind weather, which isn't guaranteed until his 3hr window is over. We better get the claim today, and the drop.... this bird needs to die!!!! if I ever lvl thf, I am NOT going after this item >_<

Progressing...

In the last week I think i've made some good progress with Zerayla. I managed to take her from 35-42 in one day which surprised even myself. I had gotten an invite from a friend Alianne, and joined his party for a few hours. Right after that party invite, my other friend Anderoc invited me to his static that he currently has going and I managed to get 42 before the end of the night. I think this just goes to show that as long as you can get yourself into a decent party where people understand their roles, and have up to date gear you can easily plow through your lvls.

So the next day I ended up getting my AF Weapon for SAM. I read up on the quest, and it turns out that you need to have the Mumeito which you get when you first unlock SAM. Well, as most others probably do... I tossed mine because it was a lvl 1 weapon and I figured once I had lvled SAM beyond the lvl where i'd equip it, I would no longer need it.

Yeah right. So in order to get the great katana again, I had to dish out 30k to an NPC. -_-Wasn't really happy with that, because that week I had spent more gil than I had farmed. But it wasn't like I had a choice, so I bit my tongue and gave the NPC his gil. Then I had to head out to The Sanctuary of Zhi'tah and kill Goblin Robbers for some fish scales, which I would then have to use to pop an NM fish. That fight went really well, except that when I killed the NM I didn't see the key item show in chat log so I started to panic thinking maybe I had to kill the NM on SAM, which would mean that i'd have to ask for some help. But before I did that, I decided to check the ??? that I had traded my item to, and then I got the confirmation that the key item was obtained!

And the party that got me my SAM 43, was actually a subligar farming party that a few LS members put together. It was reaaally late at night, and I had just been meriting (xp was kinda slow so I was glad that I had an opportunity to do something else) when Josudes who recently came back asked if anyone could help him and our other LS member Reiyn get their THF subligars. So I headed out on my SAM and we spent a good 2-3 hrs farming in Phomiuna Aqueducts. We managed to get the THF subligar on the first spawn, but we didn't get our second subligar that night. With all the xp we had obtained from the kills (60-120) I ended up hitting 43 on my SAM ^^

And to further make my week, during our gods night in Sky I got myself the Aquarian Abjuration: Hands. So after that run I went and got my cursed mitts and had them uncursed so that I could add these to my collection:

(Arg, wikipedia is down so I don't have a pic of the Zenith Mitts -_-)

I was really happy to get these off my list of "things to get in sky" because they're one of the items that often have many people bidding, so there's usually a bit of competition to get them. I guess our sky LS doesn't really have too many mages though right now that still need them because they've done Genbu a lot in the past and the drops have always been pretty good.

Also managed to pickup my Cleric's Pantaloons in Dynamis-Jeuno last night. Last night was our second run as our new established shell "RidersOfRohan" and we did great. We had a couple of big pulls, but our group handled them very well and we didn't have any wipes until the end, which of course was after the win so it wasn't so bad because everyone got a R3. I also played WHM for the first time in Dynamis, and i'm glad that I have no lag. I think I did pretty well, kept status effects off the tanks and other melee and kept everyone healed with the help of our other healers.

So now for this week, i'm going to focus on skilling up my GreatAxe to 218, which is the current cap for my lvl (63) on my WAR. I'm a little disappointed that the rare/ex axes I have probably won't be used in xp party now (Acha d'Armas & Francisca) but if what everyone is saying is true, my GA dmg will be lot better. I'm just curious as to whether i'll be able to sub SAM. I imagine that I can if I have a PLD tank, but I don't think I want to become an MP sponge and the tank if we have a NIN so guess it all depends on the party setup. But anyways, my progress on my GA so far is 181. After 2hrs I was able to bring it up by 20 lvls thanks to a few LS members that came out with me to skillup their weapons.

And only other plan worth noting for this week, is that tomorrow night i'll be helping some LS members with their ZM. Hopefully by next week they'll have sky. I really enjoy doing the fights for these missions, but if there's one thing I'm going to hope goes smoothly is the ZM5 Ifrit's Cauldron. That place is a pain in the butt to get an entire group through, especially if Ash Dragon is up. The last time I helped LS members with a static we had setup, that dragon killed us a few times each. I swear his aggro range is a lot bigger than it should be >_<

That's it for now =)

After 9 months...

For the last few weeks, I was seriously considering taking a long time break from an event that I have participated in for over 9 months. For a long time now, i've helped lead the Dynamis LS called SpiftasticAdventures. It had always been a great shell, with people that not only were competent and could do what was needed to get the win, but a group of people that had great attitudes and were very understanding. SA was what you would call "laid back" though we did have rules and guidelines for how the shell was run.

The unfortunate thing that happened though, is that over the summer our shell began to downsize. A lot of people took vacation time, others just decided to leave the game. There were a few people who left without saying anything, but I won't get into that. So eventually, our runs weren't able to happen because soon we began to miss key jobs needed for our wins... BLM and THFs familiar with the pulls. So, what began as one cancellation ended up with 4 cancellations in a row and not one dynamis run in an entire month. The moral of our LS began to sink, and after a failed attempt at a merge (well, actually I wouldn't call it a merge... it was more of a guy named Zaus who had one other member in his shell and wanted to join us) our group decided we would give one last try at a comeback run.

So, last Tuesday night we all gathered in Bastok with our new recruits we had received over the week. We handed out new pearls, as we had decided to elect a new leader, Gimli, so that we could promote members to officers. With Archmage being MIA for the time being, we couldn't bring in new officers because he had the original pearl shell. Our new shell was one that Gimli had made when he first started the game and wanted to make a social that I guess had since died out, called RidersOfRohan.

With plenty of BLM, and a willing THF that read up on our pulls we headed in and began our comeback run. And it really was a comeback run. We had a total of 7 AF drop that night, AND we managed to get the win for many of our new recruits who were new to Dynamis. On top of that, we had a total of 207 coins drop, which I believe was the most coins ever collected from a run.

And the best part? I got my Valor Coronet!

Most of the time I hear PLDs congratulating their LS on having obtained their last Valor piece, often the Valor Surcoat. Me however? I'm congratulating SA for the dedication and efforts that got me my Valor Coronet, the first PLD AF I received from doing runs with them. We've had PLD AF drop before on previous runs, but me being unlucky I never won any of the lots. It actually became a joke within our LS that I was doomed never to get any PLD AF, but finally after 9 months of tanking dynamis runs, I was able to equip my PLD with her second piece of AF2. For something that I had come close to accepting would never happen (see my PLD in full valor), I guess I jumped the gun too soon as they say. Now I feel more encouraged to continue giving my efforts to the success of our Dynamis shell, because eventually we can accomplish the things we want to. Just a shame SE makes the drop rate so low -_-


So now onto other news... I'm on a lvling spree with my SAM. I managed to get her to 30-35 the other day. My friend Anderoc has been doing a static with a few of his friends, and they invited me once before in Qufim. Seeing as I was around the same lvl, they invited me again and after a few hours I managed to get lvl 35 and put on my Ochimusha Kote.

The party was really good actually, for a while we didn't have a healer and we were getting chain 5 on mandragoras for about 180-220xp each. Our pt setup was BRD, PLD, SAM, WAR, WAR. Eventually we picked up a WHM and headed to Garlaige Citadel and plowed through the next of our lvls. I'm sure we could of continued but most of the members were EST and it was past midnight for them when we ended.


Hopefully I can keep up with their lvling I can get an invite from them and continue plowing through my lvls. With them I know that the xp will be decent and I don't have to worry about any of the typical things that go wrong with pickup parties.

Also, I decided to try killing Poisonhand Gnadgad for a Jujitsu Gi. I was surprised to find myself with 5 other LS members camping him, which was really great because I didn't have to worry about the CC with my NM camping pt, hehe. Sadly though, after 2 claims all we had to show were the sitabaki... and thats when I decided I would head to bed and forget about camping the NM and just snag Xean's Jujitsu Gi and borrow it for a while.

The next day though when I logged in and started to make my way back to town, I ran into an NM I had never seen or even heard of. Meteormauler Zhagtegg was his name, and he was an Orc just outside Davoi. I ran up to him and killed him within a minute, but didn't get any drop.

Aside from that i've mostly been doing Limbus and now have 48 more Ancient Beastcoins to obtain before I can get my loquacious earring. KeitaroOmega ended up doing a new area of Tenemos that I hadn't done before. The layout was really interested and reminded me a lot of the shrine up in sky. Too bad the mobs weren't so nice, we had this one Ahriman that literally annihilated us all. I guess each section has 2 mobs, and once you kill one of them the other gets really strong.... and well, we ended up wiping. We did kill the Ahriman afterwards, but we had lost a lot of time and so we didn't manage to kill the last 2 mobs and only collected 2 coins each after the run. Meh, oh well.

And i've been doing some assault with LS members. Recently did the most annoying one, where you have to tank mamool and make them use their WS where they toss a weapon at you and hit a door which leads to an NPC... who you are suppose to rescue....that.... warps out of his cage after you open it.

SMART SE. SMART! The NPC has the ability to warp, but won't until you open the hatch to the little compartment he's being held in.

. . .

But yeah, we've been helping members rank up so that we can start doing PFC missions now. We try to run twice a week and so far we've done pretty good. The missions are a nice break from all the other things in this game that seem to be like a grind. Good thing grinds don't bother me too much ^^

Last but not least, I got a chance to do Divine Might again with my sky LS. A few people needed this, so we gathered together to get it for them. Our first run was a failure though, and our second run was extreeeeeeeemely close. Just as our last DD took a hit from the Elvaan Ark Angel, one of our weakened mages nuked the last of her health and we had the win. It was kinda fun to do, but the loss on xp definitely wasn't the best. I think I went down from 20k - 16k over the course of our two attempts. Lots of deaths ; ;