TBH takes down Tzee Xicu The Manifest!

Updates... not a lot has happened because i'm currently taking a break from FFXI while Xean is up visiting me for 3 weeks. We still plan to do our CoP static and a few other things, but for the time being we're going to be spending our time doing things we don't usually get to do because right now we live apart.

The most important event to have happened this weekend, was killing Tzee Xicu The Manifest which is an HNM that spawns every couple of days in Castle Oztroja. Myself, Xean, Arimis, Sabene, Alianne and Archmage had gone up there to farm the coffer key for Alianne. Arimis had noticed that the NM was up on his wide scan, and so we told Xean to go change to NIN so that we could take him.

Well, our plan had been to pull the other NMs that are nearby Tzee Xicu, but somehow Xean ended up aggroing him with the NMs so our start was a bit confusing and chaotic. Finally though, we had Alianne and Arimis killing the 2 adds while Xean tanked the HNM. I was enfeebling/refreshing and hasting, and we had Sabene keeping up her songs and Archmage was healing away. We took about an hour to kill him in total, but it was fun the whole fight. We didn't get any expensive drops, however the daylight dagger did drop which myself and Arimis lotted for. I won, which was surprising because I have bad luck with lots (just have a look at my dynamis records -_-). I was quite happy with the new dagger, and am strongly considering to use it with my Joyeuse because the dmg is quite high.


What else... Oh, well Evanai (Lokelani) and Sirivalin finally got their chance to get into Kaizen which is one of the biggest endgame LSs on our server. As happy as I am that they're going to be able to progress in areas that I would of never been able to help them with TBH, i'm still a bit sad to see them go. They aren't "leaving" TBH, but and endgame shell like Kaizen isn't your typical 2-3 day event linkshell. From what i've heard, they do things daily and so this means that in order for Ev and Siri to stand a chance to get decent gear, they'll be required to commit the majority of their time over there.

Those two will definitely be missed. They were both around a lot to help TBH get to where it is now, leading and organizing missions and I don't think anyone can deny that they were two of the more vocal people in our linkshell often making everyone laugh. I hope they do well, and eventually get to come back to us fulltime but knowing FFXI like I do, I don't think that'll be happening soon.

And of course, this means I need to start really keeping an eye out for members of TBH that can help with the leadership. Lately a lot of our leaders have been taking breaks, and we've been getting a new influx of new players which is really great because those are the kinds of players that we enjoy helping most... teaching them the ropes. So unless I bring on board some new leaders, I think i'm going to have my work cut out for me and there's only so much I can get done x_x. There's a lot of people needing various CoP and ZM missions lately, so when I get back from my break i'll probably get back into organizing those again and help them out.

Last, here's a pic of me and Xean with our new Ohats that I forgot to post the last time! (I changed my .dat for the Ohat to a feminine beret because I can't stand the sight of that ugly witch hat x_x)

Got WHM75 + Ohat!

Earlier this week, a friend and LS member Akichu offered to party with myself and Xean. We decided to take on some orcs in Halvung, and though the xp wasn't anything to drool at we still did around 8-9k an hour and Xean managed to lvl up to 75 on his NIN. He was a good 15k ahead of me, and before I could also get my lvl the party had to disband.

But thanks to Akichu's BRD, we ended up meriting again the next night and I finally got lvl 75 on my WHM. I'm glad to finally be done with the job, because I really don't enjoy it all that much. I prefer being able to attack or tank the mob in some way, and find that I usually stress myself out with WHM because I get paranoid the DDs are going to start nagging me for spells like blindna, erase and poisona. I think that i'm pretty decent as a WHM, but its definitely not the job i'm the best at in terms of speed and efficiency which is why I don't like playing it that much.

But anyways, now I have 3 jobs at lvl 75: WHM, PLD, RDM. I'm quite happy that i've managed to get this far in the game because the lvling grinds can be agonizing sometimes... but luckily having Xean with me all the time I hardly ever find it unbearable like he does.

Now I just need to wait until my vacation break is over, because once it is me and Xean will be in a static to lvl my WAR and his THF to 75. I'm really eager to finally be able to be a melee DD. The only thing i'm not looking forward to is the big shopping list I have for myself (see previous post). I could lvl without some of the items in that list, but I would really like to have myself well equipped and do the most potential that I can as a DD. I want to start seeing some big numbers @_@

And the other eventful thing that happened was the Ohat run that I organized. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get enough people to help from my LS mainly due to many not being 75, so I had to look for help through other means. I was lucky to get an offer from a friend Cmdrfly who I had helped out on BCNMs previously (for Xean's Destroyers). He was willing to come out and help, and bring a few of his LS members along who would also be trading.

In the end we had a full alliance (mostly TBH members) with a few friends (Gimli and Anderoc)that came to help along with Cmdrfly's group. We headed down to the spot where we trade the Hakutaku eye cluster, and explained everyone's roles. I was going to be first in line in the stun order. It took me about 2 NMs to finally get the hang of things, but once I had my chat filters fixed I felt in control and think I did fairly well. I was also doing hasting, healing, refreshing, enfeebling so it was a bit intense because I was constantly worried that while casting I might have to stun. Luckily though, that never happened.

When the run was done, we had managed to get 7/7 hats. Mostly everyone had stayed and I think we managed to get everyone that helped some nice drops (flare, wooden hakutaku eye, vile elixir +1 etc) so I would say it was a successful run. I would definitely do it again, and hope that sometime in the future I'll get to.

And the only other thing I can update is that I got a lvl on my SMN which is now 25. I was hoping to get it to 26 last night, but unfortunately I got myself into a really crappy party and that didn't end up happening. In fact, last night was the first time I disbanded without getting a replacement or having the party disband because it was that bad.

Our setup was way too mage heavy: SMN SMN WHM RDM WAR PUP. Yeah I had some LS members laughing at me when I told them about it.... And at first the other SMN wasn't even casting avatars, but instead was healing which didn't make sense when the WHM was at full MP. I think it took us about 5 minutes to kill one mandragora >_<

But I'm not one to ditch, so I figured i'd stay as long as I could bear or until I could find a replacement. Well, that didn't end up happening.

On one pull, the WAR got aggro from a goblin and so I told him to bring it because I would astral flow it. Unfortunately, the WHM who was apparently still "new" to the game and slow didn't get a cure off in time and the WAR died. He then said "Thanks for the cure", to which I replied "You don't need to be sarcastic about it".

Then the next thing I knew, I had the WHM and the RDM both teaming up against me and telling me that he wasn't being sarcastic in their opinion... yet the WAR wouldn't respond or confirm this. So finally I made a comment about how he shouldn't of gotten aggro and something about the party setup being bad... which then had both teh WHM and RDM teaming against me AGAIN saying "This is a great party". Then they started going on about how if I wasn't going to be apart of the "team" I should leave.

I bit my tongue and continued resting, only to have the next pull make me notice that the WAR wasn't voking every 30 seconds (he was the tank). I asked him if he was voking every 30 seconds, and again the "girls" started giving me crap and telling me to stop complaining and giving the whole "you can leave if you don't like it" speech. I was told that the game should be enjoyed, which I responded with "being in a good party dealing good dmg is fun to me, being in a shitty one isn't" and finally I just disbanded.

That was probably the first time I felt like I was being an elitist. I'm usually really tolerant of people being new to the game, and helping them out but the way that they were talking to me just made me not willing to want to be nice. They'll learn down the road that not everyone will settle for less than average playing performances, and people who don't do their job will be kicked from party... hopefully.

Ugh, only 50 more lvls to go on SMN >_>;

Shopping List.

Aside from getting within 6k of lvl 75 on my WHM and losing to yet another lot on Valor Coronet in Dynamis there hasn't really been a lot to update on. So I figured i'd use this post as a filler and list the gear that i'm going to try and work on obtaining in the future. (Yes, I am really THAT bored at work right now that I had nothing better to do with my time) .

So, i'll start with the rare/ex stuff. The first category involves assault armor that I would like to use on my RDM depending on the situation.

Notes: I plan on macroing in the body for nukes, as well as the hands. I also plan to use the hands when I'm not asked to main heal and can actually enfeeble. Otherwise, my RSE2 hands (55MP, INT+5) are pretty much my main equip for hands.

Next up, the purchaseable gear for both my WAR (which I will be working on getting to 75 in the next few months) and my RDM.

Notes: A lot of the DD gear is stuff that i'll end up needing as I lvl up. I haven't really included all the STR gear I could get, only because while I do want my WAR to be equipped decently i'm not about to spend 1 million on only 2 points of STR. I would rather invest that kind of gil on my RDM items, which as you can see are quite a bit. I want to upgrade a lot of my gear including the elemental staves which I am almost done doing. Oh and in case you're wondering why my RDM doesn't have the enfeebling torque yet, I didn't really think that spending 1.5mil on an extra +2 enfeebling skill was worth it, so I made do with my Spider Torque. But now that the price has dropped, I'd like to add this piece and also get a bit more MP+ gear for my convert or for when i'm main healing in merit parties.

Now onto the rare/ex gear that can only be obtained by doing Dynamis, Limbus, Sea and Sky.

Notes: Pretty self explanatory. I haven't had a chance to do much endgame, and I keep losing on the valor gear (wish there was a rule to passing so that the main tank could actually be properly geared -_-;). Getting this stuff will take an eternity i'm sure, but at least I know what i'm looking for.

There is probably a few things i'm not aware of, or a few things I forgot to mention but I think the list is pretty accurate for the things I need for my current jobs I play on, and plan to play on.

Under the Sea!

Finally a weekend where I felt like I accomplished a lot. Before I get to the "good stuff" I thought it worth mentioning that I hit lvl 74 with Xean's NIN last night. We ended up getting into a decent party and the THF was pulling consistently so that we could get up to chain #12. By the end of the 5-6hr party, I think I had about 60k xp. Almost at 75, and then I can hopefully work on my SMN and WAR more.

So now onto the exciting stuff. Saturday morning, me and Xean logged in for our CoP static. We were going to start with the Airship fight, which is apparently the hardest in the promathia missions. We all had our CCB Polymers (40k each -_-), our meds and we were all ready to go. Our setup was: Sirivalin (BLM), Lokelani (WHM), Xean (MNK), Kiersten (PLD), Alianne (SMN) and me as RDM.

Now the Airship BCNM has 3 parts to it: Mammets > Omega > Ultima. The plan was to use Alianne's 2hr ability on Omega, and 3 people would use their Polymers. Then on Ultima, everyone else would use their 2hr (well aside from Lokelani unless needed). We decided to enter the BCNM and do 2 test runs, just to see what we would be up against. These were pretty useful in figuring out how the battles would work.


Then for our first run, we managed to get to Omega but when we got him down to about 50%, things turned for the worst and we ended up wiping. Unfortunately, Alianne wasn't able to die in a safe place so after the rest of us raised, we thought we'd try and raise him and hopefully he could run a little bit further up, so that we could raise him a second time where he wouldn't get aggro.

Bad idea. >_<

Omega killed Alianne again before he was able to even move his character and then came after us for revenge. So we went in a second time, and I think we managed to get to Ultima that time but unfortunately hate ended up getting turned around and Ultima came towards the mages and did an AoE which ended up in another wipe.


So, finally I came up with a suggestion and asked if I could change to my WAR59, hoping that maybe I might do more damage. After gearing up, we went back in and noticed that the fight definitely went faster because me and Xean were skillchaining with Sirivalin doing MB. But by the time we were on Omega, we had a wipe due to me getting one shotted while not having my shadows up in time. When we were all raised, we decided that since we hadn't used any Polymers or 2hrs, that we would just try again from scratch... so we all went to melee Omega so that we could intentionally wipe.

And finally, on our next attempt we actually succeeded. I think we still had one wipe during Omega, but we made sure to raise quickly and recover. I ended up doing my 2hr and popping an Icarus wing for my Rampage which landed a nice 650+ and before we knew it, we were onto Ultima.... who we overkilled with everyone else's 2hr. And of course, as always... at the end of the battle the only player that was KO'ed was Xean. Its my guess that he has been our sacrifice for every BCNM we've done, because he's always dead at the end of every fight. I think SE only lets us beat the BCNM if he dies, lol.

So after hours of trying to get past the hardest battle in CoP (because everytime we failed, we had to wait 2hrs before we could use our 2hr ability again) we were finally ready to speed through the next cutscenes and get onto the last fight, TENZEN!

This of course, ended up taking longer than expected. When we were finally ready for the BCNM and just waiting on a few people to zone into Tavnazia, Sirivalin had a disconnection. We waited a bit for him to come back, but when he finally came back Lokelani also had the d/c symbol above her head. She was gone for about 20 minutes, and just as we started to discuss about putting the last BCNM before Sea on hold, she came back.

We headed into the BCNM, and pretty much went all out on Tenzen. At 75%, I did chainspell > stun so that he couldn't use his skillchain and in a matter of minutes the fight was over. Sea was finally ours!!!!

After zoning into Sea, we decided to play around with the creatures which we found out follow you. We took a few pics (for some reason they didn't come through on my work email, so i'll have to post them later) and basically just looked around. Eventually Lokelani found out that not all the mobs are friendly though, because she ended up with a shark looking on on her which we took out... well err.. I mean Xean took out.







All in all, Saturday was a veeeeeeeery long day for us all (we worked on the missions from 10am - 11:30pm PST) but it was definitely worth it. We still have a few more BCNMs and cutscenes to get before we can get our CoP rings, but I feel like we have the hardest/longest obstacles out fo the way finally and it'll be a breeze when we meet for our next static run.


And the only other thing I did during the weekend, was do an avatar run for several of my LS members that were needing the pacts/whispers. I did all 6 avatars as RDM/NIN which was fun, but I wish the others had been ok with just watching from a distance because it never feels rewarding when I have others helping me out. I like to see how fast I can get on my RDM/NIN in soloing conditions, because I really want to be able to take on more difficult mobs. >_<

Oye, 80k experience points to go.

There hasn't been a whole lot to happen this week. On Monday I did a bit of meriting, but unfortunately the party setup wasn't the best. I managed to get enough experience points to add another 4 merits to my "Bio III" to increase the duration of the spell to one minute, but the party wasn't moving all too fast.

Then on Tuesday SpiftasticAdventures did Dynamis San d'Oria. Originally it had been planned to do Sandy, but because another LS was going to be entering a few hours before us most of the leaders had decided to switch to Windurst so that if the LS that entered before us got all extensions, we wouldn't be stuck waiting 30 minutes minimum to enter. Unfortunately though, because of the update earlier in the day and not knowing if we'd have enough people to do Windurst a change was made, and we had to do San d'Oria.

At first we were expecting to have about a 30 minute delay because of the LS that had entered first, but they had actually been 30 minutes late entering so in the end we didn't get to enter Dynamis until 60 minutes later than originally planned. I was a little aggravated because not only was this going to make the event go past midnight which I wasn't going to be able to handle because of work the next morning, but I had pretty much sat around waiting for more than 2 hrs doing nothing when I could have been farming or doing something better with my time. Meh.

The run was going pretty well, I didn't main tank this time around because we had decided that with a 3 week break I will be taking soon, we should have the other PLDs get more experience tanking because they'll have to take over when i'm gone. I actually don't mind being backup tank, I like being able to heal other party members that might not have a healer in their party and I've been trying to kite mobs more often, especially the stones because we don't have enough Ninja's to take on the duties.

I'd say one of the good things that happened during the run was that I managed to get myself the SMN AF feet, which seem to be pretty good. I believe they increase avatar attack, and reduce the blood pact time. My SMN is still sitting at 24, but I know in time it will eventually wear the AF.

As for Wednesday night, me and Xean had our seeks up for most of our time online only to get 0 invites. How typical. I really don't understand why we're so unlucky all the time... either there's a beseiged going on, which means most people aren't lvling or like this week... there's no astral candescence which means people aren't as motivated to lvl. So around 9pm, we decided to put our seeks down and headed to Kuftal to try and get this NM goblin that drops a rare/ex axe, only he didn't end up popping at all that night.

Then yesterday, we went to go do the NM that drops the Rutter Sabatons. You have to trade him an airtank in order to get him to pop in Newton Movapolas (sp?) Xean, Raiderx, Falk and myself headed out and popped the NM twice, but didn't get the drop. I guess Raiderx's /random earlier was a forshadowing that Xean's luck was going to affect things that night.



After we finished up with the NM, me and Xean put our seek up and after about 2hrs we finally got a decent invite. The party wasn't exactly "optimal" because we had a PLD/NIN, and a WAR who was using his Kirin's Osode to melee throughout the entire fight but thankfully the xp wasn't too bad and we were getting chain #5. I managed to get my 7k remaining on WHM and got lvl 73 that night, so my goal for the week was accomplished.

So now I have about 80k experience points left to get before I hit 75 on WHM. I'll probably need to get some buffer xp in case i'm ever asked to help out with events as WHM. Then next in line to lvl will be my WAR, which hopefully i'll get to do when i'm done with my vacation with Xean as he's coming to visit me from June 22nd - July 15th. And it looks like I might even have a static for my WAR, as some LS members now have jobs that work and are at the same lvl so hopefully we can get that off the ground.

LS Subligar Race to Jeuno!

TheBrotherhood recently hosted a "Subligar Race to Jeuno" on Saturday. One of our long time members had quit (Ichibankitsune) and as with others who have quit, our members usually tend to give a large sum of gil/gear to the LS to split among the members. This time, we were given 500k to split with the members and decided that a fun way to do this would be to have a race to Jeuno as lvl 1 characters, wearing subligars. The 4 people who made it to Jeuno, or the closest to Jeuno would receive a prize of 100k, and the others who would participate would be given random gifts such as food for xp parties and fireworks which was purchased with the remaining 100k.

So the race started out in San d'Oria. The participants were: Timwakefield, Evanai, Lorraine (real character: Clarisse), Bobthemule (real character: Falk), Warp (real character: Shaoulin), Myrrh, Spalko and Soulstar.


Everyone made it through West Ronfaure no problem, and La Theine proved to be easy to get through. I think the orcs were on vacation or something because I don't recall seeing any near the crag. o.O

But as soon as everyone got to Jugnar, that's when the fun really began. The first to go down, was Timwakefield who had gotten aggro from an orc. He had been in the lead at the time, so maybe that had been everyone's plan from the start... let him get aggro first! (Notice Evanai being followed by a tiger in the backround <_<) id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5072272744448994562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXocRFEzmc4Zwgx8WPsdFPBDLQA20vF4x1PmbGX0bXJMJAFNKBXR0XoXbzmpQvdZd2d6sKOnD3NeBWBvbx9IGSBxqNfT5kEUhf5EU2xS_uNL-ZSBC-LmrkUCMEwUusFO3idyyQ5A/s400/deadtimoz6.png" border="0">Next to go down, was Evanai. She only made it a few steps past Tim, lol. Poor Ev, I really thought she might be able to make it all the way to Jeuno too!

Shortly after, Myrrh went down and then Soulstar. The rest of the members, actually ended up making it all the way to Jeuno. As soon as they did, we had everyone go back to San d'Oria and I handed out the gifts to everyone, and we had a bit of fun. Myrrh probably had too much fun though, he was trying to burn poor Evanai with the fireworks as you can see in the pic below.


I was really happy with our LS race. I had hoped that more people would of participated, but many had issues with the maintenance that had been going on and couldn't login. But regardless, those that did show up seemed to have had a really great time which made my day. I'm sure when Ichibankitsune has a chance to see the screenshots which I posted on our forum, he'll be pleased with how his "gift" to the LS was used.

And other than that, I did a few avatars for some members on Saturday morning. I did Garuda, Ifrit, Leviathan and Ramuh. It was fun, and I got myself a nice 40k from those fights. I'll probably be doing another avatar run in the next week because unfortunately Alianne wasn't able to get online over the weekend and he was the one who actually needed to the avatar fights. Somehow his content ID on his and his wife's account (Liltstitch) had become deleted/unavailable, and so because SE's support doesn't work weekends he had to wait until Monday to get the characters restored.

Lastly, I did a bit of meriting and lvling on Sunday. I managed to get 4 merits which I applied to my Bio III, making it last a minute instead of 30 seconds. I like this a lot better, because its not such an MP drain anymore. And now, I just need to do the same for my Dia III which will be helpful in merit pts. And, I ALMOST hit lvl 73 on my WHM. I'm about 7k tnl, but i'm sure i'll get that before the weekend. I really wish those anniversary rings were rechargeable ; ;

Oh! And if you look at the pic below, you should be able to notice that my character now has green eyes! I had Xean make the color adjustment for me through .dat modding, because I wanted my character to have a bit more of "me" in her, and well the color of the eyes was the easiest thing. I really like the change =)