Filler Post! Meet my mules~

Over the last two years that i've played this game, i've made a total of 7 mules. It originally started with me just needing some extra storage space before I had completed the Gobbie Bag quests, but then when I decided to take up Cooking as my craft, I found out that having a mule in each city would really help me cost wise, because I could just buy the ingredients from NPCs around Vana'diel saving me a fortune from having to buy the over priced ingredients on the Auction House.

But of course as time went by and I leveled more jobs, I wasn't able to really hold all my items and gear... and let me tell you, i'm a big "junk collector". I have a habbit of keeping all gear I buy, and storing it in case I ever need it again or can use it for another job, and I hate tossing items that can be stacked because eventually I can sell them for GIL!!! And considering its become a pain in the arse to farm anything and get a decent profit, I have found that by doing this I'm really helping myself and probably saved myself from having to go camp NMs to make any money because its a steady flow selling off random items that drop in xp parties when I get a stack.

So without further delay, meet my mules!

Naylita - (Name - Original name): She was my very first mule, and was going to be the character I would lvl when Xean wasn't online so that I could save all my jobs on Zerayla to party with Xean. I really like the elvaan race, and because I have this thing for red hair I picked Naylita's character model... however when I logged in, I found that her hair was more of an orange color ; ;

Anyways, I got Naylita to WAR13 I believe, and by that time Xean's schedule became more like mine and so I didn't really need to lvl another character to play. Plus, I also had a ton that I could do on Zerayla, such as farming so I decided there was no point to having another character leveled. That's when I decided to take Naylita to Jeuno where she currently acts as my "bank" and my "random item" keeper. I send her gil and try not to ever spend any on her. She's always collecting items like beetle jaws, bat wings, slime oils, and the list goes on and whenever she gets a stack, she will go to the AH and put the items on sale and then the money is stored on her until I see an item I reaaaally want and then I spend my gil. But for the moment, i'm back to saving and trying really hard not to splurge on that Aqua and Snow ring I see dropping in price ; ;

Taeyo - (Name - Original but inspired by "Tao" from Shinning Force): For some reason when I made Naylita, I wanted to make a mithra character and see if I could make a "THF" character. So I lvled Taeyo to about lvl 14, and even once lvled in dunes with Xean when he was lvling another job. It was kinda fun playing mithra but I definitely didn't like the low vitality they have. I wanted to continue lvling Taeyo but ultimately I've gotten so busy with trying to progress Zerayla that I put lvling Taeyo on the back burner and just ended up turning her into my equipment storage mule....

And now if you look at most people who have a lvl 75 job, a lot have a couple of million gil on them. Me? Nope... all my gil is in my equipment, because since day one I never ever sold a piece. The idea of having to pay for something again, and possibly more always kept me from selling it. So now Taeyo has 70/70 mog house inventory, 80/80 storage inventory and I believe her regular inventory is probably around 20/30. I have a feeling i'll have to make her do some gobbie quests down the road if I buy any more gear x_x

Cheveyo - (Name - Native American for "Warrior") : He was created to be a playable character for my brothers when they would come over. Of course, like always my brothers lose interest in the things they obtain and they never played him. In fact, I think I ended up lvling him to 10 so that they could finally try a party because they didn't like the grind of soloing... and in the end they never touched him, so I just deleted him and remade him in Bastok.

Right now he stores all my cooking ingredients, and whenever I have 10 grain seeds, i'll plant these to get some tarutaru rice. Other than that, he doesn't get a whole lot of attention... but maybe that's because he's a traitor to San d'Oria! HAHA!

Tahla - (Name - Native american for Wolf) : She was created to be a mule, but also to be the wife of Xean's mule character "Magisterial". It was kinda fun when I first made her, because tarutaru's have the best emote animations ever. There's a few where you can make the tarus look like they're kissing each other, sooo adorable! If I ever had to pick another playable character it would definitely be her.

I ended up lvling Clothcraft on Tahla in hopes of having another craft at 100. I took it to lvl 53, and lvled her leathercraft to 30 and Smithing to 15 before I decided to look into how profitable crafting was now that SE has done so much banning and removed so much gil from the game. When I found out that it wasn't really worth it to take another craft to 100, I decided to park her in San d'Oria (even though she's from Windurst) and occasionally when I need some leathercraft materials or want to synth some ninja tools for Xean I take her to the guilds and craft with her. But for right now, she pretty much stores all my clothcraft materials.

Eveth - (Name - Original) : Well though i'm not fond of humes (I once lvled one and found them to be veeeeery weak melee wise, and they couldn't take hits like an elvaan ; ;) I wanted to make one so I made Eveth. I don't really like the face on this model, but I like the hairstyle.

Currently she is my gardening mule, and trying to grow wind ores which i'm planning on turning into wind beads to give to a LS member Buckeyespud who has Woodworking 100+3 to see if he might get an HQ wind staff. She also holds a lot of low lvl brd gear that I had bought once when there had been plans for me to join a static where I would go BRD. In the end that never happened, so I just stored the gear on her. She also holds some cooking guild items which I have yet to use because I haven't checked to see what items are accepted in a while.

Nelle - (Name - Character from the movie "Nelle") : She's the platinum haired twin of my character. She originally was going to be my Bazaar mule that I would leave on over night, but the majority of crap items I would send her to bazaar never seemed to sell. I then just decided to take her to Jeuno and have her sell some items that i've found can be bought from NPCs and sold for a little profit on the AH. She also currently grows my tree cuttings that I try to farm, and turns them into tree saplings which I use on other mules.

Talith - (Name - Original) : A while back I had a really bad few weeks in the game with a few friends who ended up giving up on TheBrotherhood... the LS that I have worked very hard to make the best social/event LS on our server. I'm sure its not the best, but I think its pretty up there as far as quality of members go. Anyways, I felt that everything and everyone were all leaving and I just wanted some "alone" time so for almost a week me and Xean were playing on new characters we made, and Talith was mine.

I luckily got out of that phase, and decided to turn her into a gardening mule (she's now growing fire ores hopefully) and also use her to store crystals that I send to Zerayla whenever I craft. I'm planning on getting all Zerayla's crafts to 60, so i've just been storing any crystals I get on Talith.

Bellydancer - (Name - Original, given by Xean) : When I was lvling my alchemy, one of the recipes was for Artificial Lenses which are not stackable. I wanted to be able to use this item in future recipes (Invisble Powder) but of course, my other mules were getting a little crowded and didn't have a lot of inventory room... so I needed to create another mule and figured that a Galka would be a good option.

So, after getting Xean to help me with giving a humorous name I created him... and I even gave him a story. He is the exotic belly dancing galkan son of "Sprinkles", a Galka character created by Lokelani.

And so that's all my mules!

I guess to finish up this post I'll briefly summarize last night because a few good things happened. When I logged in, I had originally planned to help Kiersten farm but then he mentioned the possibility of getting his Jelly Ring which he didn't have for his PLD. I jumped to the opportunity because it would mean yet another NM I could solo on my RDM/NIN ^^

So we headed down to Bostineaux Oubliette and along the way, I had warned Kiersten about trap doors in the ground that were hard to see. Unfortunately he fell down one, so I went in after him and was going to try and help navigate back up to the top floor... but before we could get our bearings, his sneak must of worn because he was aggroed by some leeches which, to our luck linked.

So we popped out our NPCs and began beating on them, but of course I hadn't been prepared and had to fix my macros before I could really help and get some enfeebles out. I slept 3 leeches that had linked, and we killed them one by one with our NPCs. I think we had a 5th one link in the end, but thanks to my convert there was plenty of MP to keep us alive and we killed them.

When we finally got back to the NM spawn area for Sewer Syrup, we began killing the two placeholders (Mousses). On the 4th pop, Sewer Syrup spawned which was a relief for me because the last two times i'd done this for 2 other PLDs in my LS, the NM took about 3-4hrs to spawn. So once spotted, I rested up MP and took him on. Everything was going great until a haunt from behind somehow aggroed me even though I was quite a distance away, and then Kiersten went and soloed him... but in the meantime, a Werewolf bat also spawned and so Kiersten and I were trying to keep each other falling too far on HP. In the end though, we beat our mobs and Kiersten got his Jelly ring!

After that, I waited for Xean to login and we went and seeked for a party on our WHM and NIN hoping that maybe we might get 62.... but as luck would have it, that didn't happen. Haha, go figure....

We were fighting puks in Wajaom Woodlands, but unfortunately our party setup was once again not the most ideal. We had another NIN, THF, BLM and BRD which normally would of been fine, except that the other NIN wouldn't voke fast enough, and didn't have tools to enfeeble leaving Xean to be really frustrated for the first few hours. And of course, the THF was kinda slow, only making the experience even more annoying for Xean who I felt really bad for. The one job he enjoys lvling and he can't get into a decent party to have some fun with people that can do their jobs quickly and efficiently >_<

(And because i'm evil, here's a pic of Xean in his subligar! He was switching on and off between tanking and DDing and this was his setup when he wasn't tanking)

And then later on, our BRD replaced himself with a Japanese RDM. And this of course, is where I got frustrated... because see, I was doing the hasting and occasional curing. Other than that, there wasn't anything for me to cast (unless Xean asked for a flash). Xean was doing the enfeebling, so basically the only thing the RDM could do was the enfeebles Xean couldn't (Dia II), Refresh and of course.. NUKE!

Yes I know RDMs can't nuke enough to dance about, but at least its added damage. But instead, this RDM would constantly re-cast enfeebles that myself and Xean had (I was casting enfeebles when his wouldn't stick) and not ONCE did he even try to nuke. He didn't have to convert, nada!!! If I had been this RDM, I would of taken the opportunity to go crazy nuking and you can bet I would of been using that convert, because otherwise I would of felt like a worthless member of the party sitting on 500+ mp!!!! So yeah, yet another "bleh" party which left me at 3k tnl >_<

Why? why? and why?

This post is going to be more of a rant than anything, so if you're not into reading those you may want to skip this entry.

When I first played this game, the job I took to 75 was PLD. This job was fairly popular, even more so when I was a "set" lvling with Xean's WHM. We didn't get phenomenal parties, but our invites were pretty common and when I got to lvl 68, the new expansion "Treasures of Aht Urghan" was released and so the party invites I got, were always in the new areas which resulted in pretty good xp.

Of course, when I hit lvl 75, I soon realized that your typical merit party didn't include PLDs. In fact, regular xp parties didn't really like inviting them either, because if you could have a NIN tank, your damage output would be significantly more resulting in more xp/hr. So realizing this, I decided to take a well liked job for merit parties... Red Mage!

I lvled my RDM with Xean's MNK, and really enjoyed it. I'd say our party invites were about as frequent as the ones we had when we had lvled PLD and MNK. Somedays we'd get an invite within an hour of seeking, other times which were very rare we'd wait about 2 hrs... and only on a veeeeery rare occasion, would we seek and get nothing. I think that may have only happened about twice.

Well, my third job i'm taking to 75 is WHM. I decided to take this because Xean wanted to lvl his NIN, and I figured who wouldn't want to party with a WHM + NIN??!!! You have a job that can act more as a damage dealer while still tanking and requiring not so much curing as long as the job is being done well (which Xean is actually very good at) and you have a healer for emergencies... the best healer in the game! I have every cure to all status effects (well aside from that retarded amnesia move which they really need to create a cure spell for -_-) and should any party member die, I can give them a nice R2 or R3 and the xp loss won't be as big.

However, my assumption that WHM + NIN combo would get fast invites, and very good parties... has kinda been shot to the ground. I have to admit that at first, going from 40-50 our invites were pretty good. We had decent parties and never really complained. But as soon as we dinged about 55+, thats when it all went downhill.

The majority of my party invites always involved a leader who was inexperienced, or just a plain moron as I would like to put it. And now I don't generally like to insult people, but if there's one type of person that annoys me online its the type that speak using numbers for words, and generally can't put a complete sentence together. You know, i'm sure you've seen these players:

Scenario#1

Player: Hi
Me: {Hello!}


*waits for him to actually ask the question*

Player: u want 2 pt?
Me: Yes, can you please let me know what your setup is? And do you have room for Xean?
Player: just me now I can get a pld tho


Scenario#2

Player: Hi
Me: {Hmm...}?
Player: party?
Me: Yes please. What do you have in your party and can you invite Xean?
Player: we only have room for 1 person
Me: My comment lists that i'm partying as a set, so if there's no room for Xean then i'll have to decline. {Take care!}

So lets look at the problems here. First of all, WHY do people say a greeting ONLY in their first sentence???? Why not add your question WITH your greeting! It saves you time!!! Second, what happened to people trying to make complete sentences using proper grammer? I don't understand why people prefer to use numbers instead of words... I understand it can be quicker, but gawd does it ever look aweful seeing a bunch of digits in a sentence that has reference to the actual value of numbers! And third... why do people not look at the /seacom????? I admit i've forgotten once when I was in a hurry to find a replacement, but generally I always look in case there's something important, like indicating that you're partying with a friend!


So yeah, aside from the fact that I feel i've been playing with people who seem to have failed elementary school, i've also been having to deal with very bad party setups. And when I say bad, I don't mean to say its something to die over, but i've gotten better xp on my PLD than some of the parties i've gotten. I would expect, that having 2 jobs that can potentially form a "cannon" party, we should be getting these great party setups with a BRD, and great DD.

However, that hasn't been the case. I have partied with a PUPs who really lack any real damage output (which leads me to believe there's a reason why most players laugh at them like they do DRGs). I have partied with CORs who don't understand that they're inviting to "enhance" the party's performance which means giving the mages refresh and that other dice roll that helps the hmp+, but instead they feel their priority is to DD and only keep one dice roll up at any given time. I'm pretty sure that like a RDM or BRD, once you've started your "cycle" you can keep your spells up at all times.

So to sum it all up, I think I only recall one party since 55 that has offered decent xp. That party had a mostly JP player base, and we were fighting puks. Ever since, half my parties have been without a refresher/dispeller and the choice on where to fight, what to fight, and what jobs to have in the party have just been really bad choices period.

Last night, me and Xean were partying on crawlers in Aydeewa, and we had no refresher which was fine as there was a SMN to help with healing if needed... however, our BLU didn't cast the dispel BLU spell until about an hour into party. I think he just didn't realize he had it (I didn't even know they had a dispel). But he would have to sit for an entire battle to rest up his MP after a chain, and the rest of our DMG which was being done by a SAM, DRG and Xean on NIN... just wasn't enough to get anything more than 3.5kish of xp/hr.

And eventually our BLU d/ced (likely forced) and it wasn't until 20 minutes later that the leader decided we should all head back to Aht Urghan and get a replacement. After getting a replacement, everyone stood around waiting for the leader to tell us where to go and eventually because no one would talk, our replacement just left. Then I think someone else d/ced, and the choices for replacements were THF and BLM, and at that point I was already frustrated because the leader didn't really seem to be very knowledgeable in good party setups, nor on a good camp. So I ended up asking Xean to tell the party that we were going to leave (I didn't know how to say it nicely, and he just does it so bluntly but without seeming rude). and logged off to go color a picture I drew of Zerayla (thanks Myrrh, now you have me hooked on doing artwork again!!!)

So I guess the point of this post, was more or less just to ask "Why do me and Xean have such bad luck getting invited to a friggin good party when we have 2 desired jobs?!". I keep asking this everytime we're in a bad party, and the best I can come up with for an answer is that whatever GM is stalking Xean and messing with his luck in this game (he has the worst luck for drops and lotting I swear) is also trying to mess with his progression, which therefore includes the parties we seek together for ; ;

And the above is a really cool screenshot I took of one of our "bleh" parties we were having. I really like the pose that Xean has there, and you can see he's tanking well because the mob is facing towards him. I've really gotten into this addiction of taking screenshots to post in my blog, because I love editing them in photoshop and making them look pretty so expect future posts to have tons of these >_>;;

There are good moments in this game, and then there are bad ones.

Lets start with the good stuff, because that's always much better to read...

A LS member Spalko had asked to get some help for his Tachi: Kasha weaponskill quest, which involved fighting a high lvl NM beetle in Kuftal Tunnel. Originally I didn't think that we were going to have a whole lot of help for this, but when I logged in I soon found that quite a few LS members were willing to give a hand, and before you knew it we had an alliance on their way.

At the time I had been talking with Kiersten, a PLD75 in our LS about gear as he's going to be joining a sky LS soon and will be able to upgrade his gear, and he ended up offering to give a hand with the NM so I went ahead and grabbed my RDM gear instead so that he could tank it. As much as I do love tanking, sometimes I prefer being able to play my RDM and was glad I had the opportunity to do so. In the end we had a ton of LS members come out (Kraksa, Alyada, Alianne, Sirivalin, Lokelani, Kiersten, Falk and I believe another member or two) and we owned the beetle. I even managed to take some good shots, but me being the forgetful person that I am forgot to send them to my work email address so i'll have to wait to post those and update this later.

I also managed to get in 2 lvls on my DRK, taking it from 29-31. I had been invited to a Japanese party (well there was one english speaking player) and we fought goblins and mandragoras in Yhoator jungle with ease, but then again we also had a PL at the time so that really cut down our resting time. I also really got to experience the update that allows you not to lose tp when resting as long as you have signet, which was veeery useful what with me being DRK and having to use up my MP every battle.

The only thing though is that I found that playing DRK wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be. Maybe it was that I was distracted with the conversations in our LS that night (Myrrh jokingly hitting on Xean and them discussing ways to murder each other) that I wasn't focusing much on my party so I couldn't get the most out of it, but I found that there was very little for me to do but hit hit hit, cast a spell, weaponskill, hit hit hit. It wasn't as "busy" as I had found PLD or RDM to be, so I guess that's probably why I couldn't appreciate it as much. But I definitely appreciated watching my dmg sky rocket when I got Berserk, I was doing upwards to 80-100 dmg a hit! Hehe, I love my dmg ^^

Then last night, when I got home from work I had promised to help Alianne do some farming in Castle Ostroja and also get the coffer key for Terminataru who needed his RDM AF there. I think the coffer key dropped after about 30 minutes, so from that point on we just killed the coffer mobs hoping for some good spell drops for Alianne.

After about 45 minutes, Xean joined up with us on his MNK and we were killing really fast. We ended up getting 2 good scrolls (Tornado and Hojo: Ni) which were worth about 160k together, as well as various BRD scrolls worth 2-10k each. In the end, i'd say our farming session was really successful for about 3hrs.... its only too bad that right at the end some RMT decided to go after our mobs and it became an all out war on getting claim which of course we were winning.

But eventually I had to head to Bastok Mines to do dynamis. And this is where the bad moments comes in.

I've been supporting my dynamis LS SpiftasticAdventures since November. At the moment, we only do 1 run a week so in terms of progression, we're still very behind to established linkshells but we finally have the right jobs showing up every run that we no longer have to panic that we aren't going to have a full alliance. We've also finally had a few wins (Bastok, Jeuno) and have really pulled together and been perfecting our strategies.

The only thing, is that in all the time thats been put into the LS I haven't once obtained any drops, even though i've had numerous chances at lotting the 100c. Everytime, I always end up getting a low lot. Normally i've been fine with this, its just gil and even though I don't have near as much as most players that have been playing for as long as me (10 million +, I wish -_-) I have enough to allow me to continue playing so its never been a big deal... Plus, the whole point is to doing the event for the "fun aspect".

But tonight, something dropped that I very much wanted and was very very upset to lose. It was the Valor Coronet, the piece I was going to be lotting on for Bastok. The funny thing is I didn't even see it drop until I heard everyone in the LS saying "GL PLD!" and then I checked to see that it had dropped. I was estatic, because in so many months I hadn't seen it drop once.

So immediately I went and lotted and gave a quick little prayer wishing that I would have the highest lot...

Turns out, I was 10 points under the highest lotter.... Yep... ten... measly points. I know that I shouldn't be upset that I lost, but I couldn't help it because I felt that I had put in so much time, and worked very hard (I'm the main tank for our LS) and I was going to lose, by 10 points. It really did crush me, because of course i'm the type of person to be the most pessimistic when it involves myself and the thoughts going through my mind were: "It'll never drop again". And even if it were to magically drop again, I currently have about 4 other people in the LS also main lotting PLD for that zone so my chances aren't so great to getting the next one, and that just discourages me because I have always wanted to see my PLD in full Valor.

I'm sure i'll get over it, its just a piece of gear... and I know that I enjoy other things in this game far more than just getting relic gear... but even still, it felt like a loss, a victory taken away from me and being able to shrug my shoulders and say "meh" is a bit harder. *sigh*

All I know is that if I give up now, I won't ever see it so guess that's the best advice I can give myself at this point. Lets hope it works, lol.

Whm 60! Woo! (not)

So over the weekend, me and Xean were suppose to do our CoP static but unfortunately one of the members wasn't able to really focus much and asked to do a rain check... so me and Xean did some more xping on our WHM and NIN. I really like that he can finally play a job that takes a while to bore him, because NIN is one of the jobs that keeps you on your toes and you have to pay attention to keep your shadows up. Of course this means that the better Xean does his job, the more boring of a time I end up having because there's very little for me to do... and i'm serious, I sit there half the time just tossing regen on the other DDs every once in a while, and hasting everyone. The only time I get any action is when we're fighting mobs that cast enfeebles on the party, in which case I get to add erase to the spells I'm casting. Other than that, i'm sitting there resting and occasionally waiting until the mob is low on HP to cast banish II or banishga II if there aren't any other mobs around.

We finally got ourselves a decent party though, so I couldn't complain. We were fighting Puks which was giving us 200-400xp per kill, and we were easily getting chain 5. At first the xp was a little slow though because our party was mostly 58/59, so it was taking us longer to kill the mobs but eventually we lvled and it got a lot easier. I went from having 10k tnl (lvl 60) to having about 5k tnl (lvl 61). I even got to cast my first Raise II on our BRD who had pulled a little too eagerly before the mob we were fighting had been killed off.... which also reminded me of why I don't think i'll be taking BRD to 75, I really don't like pulling unless i'm on WAR or THF and I don't particularily like the idea of chancing deaths like they do.

Sunday I woke up and decided to take up a friend Carste on his offer to help me farm some more Royal Jelly which is a rare/ex item used in my final recipe "Cursed Soup" which is suppose to take me from lvl 99-100. I figured because it was full moon, I would get lucky and get a skillup at the very least...

Yeah I love when my guesses are right.... -_-

Again, I spent a few hours farming and had nothing to show for it. Out of 8 synths, I had 0 skillups. The last time I had farmed, I had gotten 13 synths and also had 0 skillups so once again, I was quite annoyed. I was pretty much trying to get myself to face the reality that maybe it wasn't worth it to get my cooking to 100, because i'd be able to craft what I needed fine at lvl 99+2. The only reason I "want" 100, is so that I can increase my chance of HQ but now i'm not sure thats a big deal anymore... I think I just want to see that lvl 100 beside my name to add to one of my accomplishments... but now i'm not sure its worth the irritation of working towards. Likely i'll just farm up my Royal Jelly when i'm really bored, or if I can get some help from a friend so that its not a complete waste because at least I can catch up with friends and chat while i'm doing the farming.

(Yes, I was doing clothcraft in my cooking clothes <_<;;)

So after that, I headed to Windurst and decided to lvl up my clothcraft a little more. My plan is to eventually have all my other crafts at lvl 60, and so far I think i'm doing good working on it a little at a time. I managed to go from Clothcraft 3-7 though I didn't get any of what I put into those lvls back. Its ok though, it was only maybe 20k total that I spent and i've been using some of my Imperial Standing lately to buy bronze coins and sell them on the AH, so I do have some gil coming in. And I also managed to take my Alchemy from 28-31 and in that, I should be making profit down the road because the item I crafted (Artificial Lens) will be used in making Invisible Powder down the road, which is an easy seller. Next up I have potions to craft, which look fairly cheap and thanks to Carste and Chpal, I have plenty of crystals to keep me going in all my crafts (thanks guys!!)

And before getting set for our subligar run, one of our LS members Alianne had asked for a raise in Qufim. He had been partying on his BLU and ended up getting aggro from a giant while the rest of his party had been AFK. Normally I wouldn't of had a problem because accidents happen, but what bothered me was that his pt had pretty much decided to disband, and not bother trying to find him a raise! So of course I got my WHM and outpost warped there to give him one, but I made sure to tell the party members (particularily one who is notorious for been an arse and inconsiderate) what I thought of them. Ali has always been one of the LS members going out of his way to help me, never expecting anything in return so of course I made sure to repay the favor... only wish I could of helped him lvl more on his BLU which he wants to get ready to do some BCNMs it looks like.

When Xean finally logged in, we headed off to Phomiuna Aqueducts with our LS (Sirivalin, Lokelani, Falk, Demonwolf, Kraska and Alianne) to farm some subligars. As usual, we ended up with a lot of unwanted subligars but all in all it was fun. Kraska got his BRD/BST subligar, Falk got his WHM subligar, Lokelani got her DRK subligar and Xean got his THF subligar.

It really sucked though because we had wanted to get 2 more THF subligars for Lokelani and Demonwolf, but our THF formor barely popped and when it did, it would never drop. It was a surprise to us all when it finally did, and even more of a surprise when Xean lotted above 900 for it, only to hear Lokelani say she was going to pass it because she couldn't equip it yet on her THF where as Xean could. Xean found it humorous, because everytime he has no competition he always gets a high lot, but whenever he does, he has the lowest lot... I think we're both convinced he has some GM following him around intentionally trying to make Xean's luck worse, lol.

Our subligar run went on for a few hours but eventually Falk, Demonwolf and Kraska had to leave. We were still able to handle the formors, but one accidental link pull lead to a party wipe. But luckily Myrrh had come out to give us a hand, and came as WHM to raise us all, which allowed us to get in another 30ish minutes of farming which ended up giving me a DRK subligar. I'm not quite sure if i'll be taking DRK up to 75, but it is a job I think I could enjoy.

And aside from that me and Xean finished up some cutscenes for CoP so that we'd be ready to continue with our static which will hopefully pick up next Saturday. We have our anima farmed for promyvion-vazhl, and hopefully everyone will be able to make it so that we can continue.

Diabolos: 1, Zerayla: 0

So our CoP static decided that we were going to try and do the Prime Diabolos fight, in hopes of adding this demon to our avatar collection. Our setup was a little strange compared to what most would of had, as we were going to have 2 WHM but because we could only do this with our static, and Alianne and Lokelani only had WHM at 75, we didn't really have too many options.

We all got ourselves ready, and headed off to Beaucedine, and then into Pso'Xja where we found ourselves naked because of the area being a lvl 40 capped area. We didn't plan on staying in the area so none of us bothered to bring lvl 40 gear, so off we went running through the zone, parading in our very own Vana'diel undergarments! Lol!!

Well when we finally got to the zone before we would enter the Diabolos Prime Avatar fight, we went over our strategy. The plan was to have Kiersten our PLD, and Xean our MNK go melee him. Our WHMs Alianne and Lokelani would heal as needed and me (RDM) and Sirivalin our BLM would enfeeble Diabolos. Then when he was to get to about 70%, Kiersten would 2hr which would be followed by Xean's, Sirivalin's and my own. I was going to chainspell and Blizzard III his ass...

Unfortunately though, that didn't quite happen. We hadn't expected Diabolos to get off a sleepga II, and I guess because this hadn't been expected, our PLD didn't think to cure one of the WHM to get off a curaga right away. It wasn't too long until he let off his nightmare when the mages were finally able to wake all of us and I think everyone was in a bit of a panic because of our dwindling HP and our 2hrs which didn't really get to have their full potential because we had been slept during that time. Eventually we all ended up hitting the ground, with Lokelani being the last survivor in a 2 second "kiting" attempt where she intended to Holy him to death... (gotta love her sense of humor and spirit when death is around the corner, lol)

I don't think any of us were upset, because accidents happen and considering we at least knew what to prepare for the next time, we eagerly gave it another shot. The only problem this time though, was that we didn't have our 2hrs.

Our second round, went pretty good until about 50% when nightmare went off again. I don't recall things exactly, but I knew that our HP went down pretty quick and after getting him to maybe 30-40% he wiped our party again. I think we had done better this round though because we were a little more aware of what to expect, and Sirivalin was kind enough to give us some poison potions to protect us from his sleepga.

After exiting the battle area, we found out our WHMs didn't have RR, but luckily mine was still available. Lokelani offered to HP and come give me a R3 but considering I had used a reraise earring to begin with, I figured a little xp wasn't going to hurt and i'd rather help out my party as best I could. (I just have this annoying obsession with wanting to keep my "buffer" xp above a certain amount, and now that I love meriting on RDM its always hard to give up the merit points to regain it... oh well, part of the life of FFXI!! ^^)

Other than that, me and Xean worked on our NIN and WHM. We managed to get to lvl 59, but along the way we experienced some really annoying and slow parties. I swear we're cursed to have two of the most highly wanted jobs, and yet we're never lucky enough to get into the "best of the best" pts. It drives me nuts sometimes too, because I just want to see what it could be like to get more than a chain 6.

Guess i'll just have to keep crossing my fingers that we'll get lucky one night when seeking. Until then, gotta go with what we get and as long as its not going to make Xean waste his gil too much (man oh man is NIN expensive if you want to do it right) then we'll slowly make our way to 75. And I will definitely be happy when that happens, because next up I'm going MONK!! BOOYA!

Little updates

Been a while since i've updated, because I keep forgetting to send my pictures over to my email so that I can write up an entry at work. But anywho, first update is that myself and Xean now have our WHM + NIN duo at lvl 57. We decided to quest our AF body pieces during the week, which meant that I needed to farm a Tavnasian Bell in The Eldieme Necropolis. I had remembered when we did Xean's, and that it had taken hours before we saw a drop... so I already figured i'd be farming this item for a few hours.

Luckily, our friend Alianne came out with his THF and decided to lend me and Xean a hand. Turns out his Treasure Hunter II apparently works, and can't be affected by Xean's "Treasure Hunter - " effect we claim he has (inside joke - Xean's drop rate sucks more than anyone else's we've ever seen) because we ended up getting the drop on the second mob!

A few days later, I was able to ask a few LS members to come give a hand for the NM fight in Fei'yin and we took it down with ease... though as usual, Xean ended up being the meat shield about half way through the fight, and even more so after he used Hundred Fists. Thankfully he had something like 1700+ HP so the mages had enough time to toss Cure V's at him without him dying. When we were done with this, I went and traded my drop in exchange for the Healer's Briault which i'll be able to equip at lvl 58.

A few days after this, we also dragged Sirivalin and Evanai (her new character name is now Lokelani) with us to Yhoator Jungle where we fought 3 NMs for Xean's AF3. Along the way he decided to kill a goblin, and I managed to get a pretty good pic! And for those who are wondering, yes he is a Ninja in that shot... but i'm sure you're asking, why is he wearing the MNK AF body piece? Well that's because I edited the .dat for the Scorpion Harness which he was wearing in that shot, and replaced it with the MNK AF Body piece because I prefer seeing that when i'm partying with him... of course now anytime an elvaan male is wearing the SH, I always see them as MNKs!

And speaking of .dats, I also had a few changed recently. I have a new look for my PLD which I prefer to the adaman set. This is a hybrid of the Divine Might Elvaan outfit and pieces of the PLD AF2 that drops in dynamis areas. I also found a nice mod that changed my Fenrir to look like an Egyptian Anubis which I really like! Only thing is that I'm not quite ready to start lvling SMN so it'll be a while until I use him.


As usual, we also did our CoP static on the weekend. We went back to Sacarium and this time we were able to get the NM ghost to pop in the second room we tried. It was kind of a lengthy battle but it went pretty smoothly. It would of gone better, but at one point Alianne who was our SMN was slept during Astral Flow and wasn't able to get as many astral flows off as intended. The fight pretty much involved Kiersten tanking the main NM, Xean kiting one of the little ghost pupils with Alianne kiting the other, Sirivalin nuking away and Lokelani healing... and then there was me, enfeebling and refreshing like crazy. So now our next mission is Promyvion-Vazhl which we're going to be doing this upcoming Saturday.

Also had the opportunity to go solo Ifrit and Shiva for a LS member Clarisse. She was a great help for the Ifrit battle, because there were a few times I wasn't as focused as I should have been, and my buffs would wear and i'd be too slow getting them up while keeping my shadows up. The Shiva fight however was much easier, and I decided to chainspell + Fire III her at the end for the fun of it. The interesting thing is that when we finished, I realized we had fought her on ice day which meant she should have been a lot stronger. I was surprised because I found her a breeze compared to Ifrit, but then again whenever i've played on PLD i've always disliked any MNK type of mob because they really like to beat me up ; ;

The only other notable thing I can think off hand is that we helped Carste get the last of his Hakutaku eyes that he needed to synth his cluster in order to pop the NM that drops the O-Hat. We were farming Millioneyes in Den of Rancor with Myrrh and Mishaela and right as Carste got a merit point the wooden hakutaku eye dropped. It was a good thing too, because I had hoped to get to bed shortly after and felt bad that I might have to leave without him getting the drop.

And speaking of merits, SE now has a new animation which I thought was pretty neat and took a pic of. I managed to get enough merits to put another point into my sword skill, which I believe now sits around 284? I could be wrong, but I seem to recall it being around there. I think I have added 2-3 merits to sword now, and hope to do some more meriting soon to finish it off and then i'll work on enmity and MP next.

Awesome Update SE! ( '-')b

March 2007 will forever be remembered as the month that SE royally messed up. They had a huge update on March 7th, and quite a lot of people ended up having ridiculous download times like myself, where we would be disconnected before even reaching something like 15%. Needless to say, I wasn't able to play for an entire night, and it wasn't until the day after that I was able to finish the download for the update.

Everything seemed fine, until the weekend when I found out that on all my characters except for one mule, I would get "R0" which led to my characters disconnecting. I couldn't figure out how to resolve the problem at first, nor could thousands of other players who also experienced this problem. Many of us emailed, called and tried various ways to get in touch with SE to find out what the problem was, and how to fix it because surely if we had been able to play fine without any problems, up until downloading their update, the problem had to be theirs. But just as expected, the response we received was that the problem was on our end, and there was nothing they could do.

Eventually I found some suggestions to change my IP address, and so I called up my ISP and had them guide me how to do that. This fixed the problem, and I was extremely happy to know that I would be able to do my CoP static that weekend.

Unfortunately though, the CoP static didn't end up going as well as planned. We spent a long while farming coral keys needed to spawn an NM in Sarcarium, and then we had to go and reduce our formor hate. Finally when we headed back to go pop the NM, we were about to find out that apparently ghosts don't like to be found... Our NM is suppose to be a ghost, and he spawns when you open a drawer found in 1 of 6 rooms in Sarcarium. Well, apparently this ??? rotates every 15 minutes, and one of the rooms can only be accessed by using one of your keys (once used, it disappears from inventory). We spent 2.5 hrs trying to find the ???, going through all of the rooms one by one but with no luck. It wasn't until the end when we decided to waste one of our keys and go to the 6th room, that we would of finally been able to complete the quest... however lets just say that we "took a wrong turn" and because of how late things were, we decided we'd retry another day.

Though I didn't get to progress in CoP, I did finally get to see this beautiful area of Miseraux Coast where there is an elegant waterfall that cascades down so gently. I had to take a picture of this place, and only wished that I had seen this area before because its really amazing. One thing SE does have, is really good scenic designing and this is one of their many examples.

Other than that, I did a little bit of farming with my NPC Epilleve. I've decided that i'm going to try and grow some ores, as a LS member is willing to craft me some elemental beads, which I can then ask another LS member who has Woodworking 100+3 to craft into the elemental staves. I am hoping that I can get an HQ staff, and figure that because i'm not spending any money on the materials, if I get a regular i'm not going to be upset. Just means I have to remind myself to check on my mules daily >_<

And as of last night, I soloed my second Sewer Syrup on my RDM/NIN. One of our LS members, Kagemusha has been lvling his PLD and just hit 60. He wanted to camp Sewer Syrup to get his Jelly Ring, so I headed down to try and pop the NM. The trick with this NM is that you have to kill 2 mousses (lvl 67ish) and hope that the NM spawns. Well, when we got there, we already had 1 counter camper who brought a few of his bodies as time went by... so I called reinforcements! We had quite a few LS members come to our rescue, and soon we had about 7 of our members, vs 5 of theirs which ultimately led to them leaving! *evil grin*

So about 4hrs later, it was just me, Xean and Kagemusha left and just as we were discussing the possibility of leaving within the hour, our NM popped!! So off I went to solo!! I killed that NM with a little help, and Jelly Ring dropped!

Back to the good'ol days

Yup, over the weekend me and Xean dragged Josudes, one of our closest friends in the game and probably the one we've known the longest, to come and kill an NM with us. Xean wanted to get the rare/ex katana hototogisu that drops from the popped NM called "Beryl-Footed Molberry" which I believe is a lvl 75ish NM. We ended up popping the NM twice with no drop, and in between when we had to wait for the pop item "Tonberry Rattle" to spawn, I decided to lead both of the guys over to another NM called Bonze Tonberry I had remembered seeing before. Well things were going great, we were pwning the NM but none of us had realized that a pot had aggroed from behind, and was pounding up Josudes.

Xean of course was the one taking the worst of the beating from the NM because he was on his MNK, and in the end he ended up getting killed. We thought it was kind of humorous because everytime we go and do something with the 3 of us, Josudes is always the one dead and as tradition, we always sit on his face and take a screenshot. This time, it was Xean's turn to eat the dirt and have the pleasure of having myself and Josudes sit on his head, mwahaha! Ahh.... that was a good night though. Really reminded me of the good old days back when Josudes, Xean and myself were still lvl 50ish and we'd go and do quests together.

The next day Xean, Alianne and myself tried to take the NM again in hopes of getting his katana, but again no drop. It wasn't until last night that we tried another 2 times, that we got the item. Funny part is that I had gotten a tonberry rattle myself so that we could pop a second time, and it dropped when I made my trade which figures because we all know Xean's luck is non-existent in this game, hehe.

And of course after we got the drop, we decided to seek on our WHM and NIN and hopefully hit 56... unfortunately that did not happen. We got into a pt with a THF, COR, BLM and MNK and headed to Kuftal Tunnel. The MNK was proving to be a problem for Xean, because he was suppose to take the first voke but instead would Chi Blast causing a delay, which of course caused Xean to lose a few shadows that would of otherwise been unecessary. And as time went on, I started to notice that I was having MP issues, which was a little odd considering I didn't have to do much healing, and had good MP+ gear.

Thats when I noticed the COR was only putting one song on us, and often took forever to reapply it. I don't know a lot on COR, but I know that its possible to have 2 songs up for melee and mage after their "cycle" has been started, and so after waiting a bit in case he was just distracted or not realizing.... I said something in party. He got offended and told me to "stfu".

Well I wasn't in the mood for putting up with someone that not only couldn't perform their tasks in party efficiently, but for someone to give me attitude when I hadn't been hostile in the first place really got on my nerves. So me and Xean let him have it, and proceeded to explain to him that he should keep two songs up at all times. We continued, but again, my mp was still suffering (those crabs spam the STR down spell -_-) and Xean continued to ask the COR to help us mages. Finally, he gave us some more attitude and then it lead to an arguement where he tried to tell us he could only have one song on at a time, and that his focus was to be melee first.

. . .

If we had wanted someone to be "melee", a COR is definitely not among the top 3 choices. We could of replaced him with something better, and he didn't seem to realize that his duties for being in an xp party = buff the party. Instead, he felt his priority was to melee and in the end he just kept cussing at us, and we disbanded and left. After that experience, i'm pretty sure that COR will not be among the jobs i'll want to invite because their rolls don't always work out nice, and i'd rather have something that is certain to help the party, instead of chance.

And also earlier in the day, our LS went to help two of our members get their G2 done: Istaro and Onedarkflame. It was fun, but we did get quite a bit of unecessary aggro. It took us about an entire hour to get it done, and the lesson I learned from this is that as RDM, my nukes suck on these guys and its much better to go as my PLD for future runs. I hardly saw the HP bar drop when i'd fire off a nuke ; ;